The western burrowing owl secured temporary protection this Thursday under California’s Endangered Species Act. The state Fish and Game Commission voted to give the owls candidate status and temporary protection, expected to...more
On June 27, 2024, the California First District Court of Appeal affirmed the denial of a writ petition challenging the City of Lafayette’s determination that a 12-unit residential condominium building qualified for the Class...more
The California Supreme Court held that under newly enacted Assembly Bill 1307, the environmental impact report prepared for UC Berkeley housing and longer-term development was not inadequate for failing to consider social...more
The California Supreme Court recently upheld the Environmental Impact Report (“EIR”) for the Long Range Development Plan (“LRDP”) for the University of California Berkeley (“UC Berkeley”) and a controversial housing project...more
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ refusal to rehear a pivotal gas appliance regulation decision has thrown a wrench into local efforts to reduce fossil fuel use....more
Last week, the 9th Circuit voted against rehearing en banc its decision from last April finding the City of Berkeley’s ban on natural gas connections in new construction to be preempted by the Energy Policy and Conservation...more
San Francisco - Can Free Rent Jump-Start a Downtown San Francisco Revival? Pop-Up Retailers Say Maybe (SF Standard): Nearly halfway into the three-month program, called Vacant to Vibrant, stakeholders say it has breathed...more
A roundup of news and multimedia from the Unfamiliar Terrain team: San Francisco - San Francisco Office Market Shows Signs of Life (Wall Street Journal): Sales slowly materialize as some sellers accept lower prices,...more
In December 2022, the City of Berkeley passed the Fair Workweek Employment Standards Ordinance. The ordinance will become operative on January 1, 2024. The Berkeley ordinance is similar to the City of Los Angeles’s Fair...more
Welcome to “CEQA News You Can Use,” a quarterly production of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP’s Natural Resources lawyers. This publication provides quick, useful bites of CEQA news, which we hope can be a resource to...more
In April, a three-judge panel in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the City of Berkeley’s ordinance prohibiting natural gas infrastructure in new buildings was preempted by federal law. In June, Berkeley asked the...more
Following up on our April 21 post, the UCLA Environmental Law Clinic recently filed an amicus brief in the California Restaurant Association v. Berkeley litigation, joining multiple other governmental and non-governmental...more
As Seth Jaffe posted last week, the 9th Circuit recently struck down the City of Berkeley’s first-in-the-nation electrification ordinance that prohibited the installation of gas infrastructure in new buildings, finding the...more
On Monday, April 18, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in California Restaurant Association v. City of Berkeley, overturning a lower federal district court’s ruling to revoke the City of Berkeley,...more
Berkeley, California recently joined Los Angeles, San Francisco and Emeryville, California; New York City; Philadelphia; Chicago; Seattle; Euless, Texas; and Oregon as jurisdictions that have enacted “fair workweek”...more
Last week, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that the Berkeley ordinance essentially banning use of natural gas in new construction was not preempted by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. I’m not here to opine on the...more
In Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods v. Regents of the University of California, No. A157551 (June 25, 2020) the court of appeal rejected the University of California’s argument that it need not have prepared a Supplemental EIR...more
On March 31, 2020, six counties in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as the City of Berkeley, extended and tightened their March 16, 2020 orders for all individuals living in those locations to shelter in place to slow the...more