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[WEBINAR] Update on the California Environmental Quality Act: What’s New for 2018
The Sixth District Court of Appeal filed on July 24, and later certified for publication on August 6, 2024, its opinion in Center for Biological Diversity et al. v. County of San Benito, et al. (2024) __ Cal.App.5th __. The...more
City of Los Angeles - Increase to Planning Applications and Affordable Housing Linkage Fees - On July 1, 2024, the fee for planning and land use applications increased by 3.5% based on the Consumer Price Index for All Urban...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
“It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” Yogi Berra and Lenny Kravitz - In a unanimous opinion filed on June 6, 2024, the California Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the First District Court of Appeal in the controversial...more
City of Los Angeles - Proposed Citywide Adaptive Reuse Ordinance - In 1999, the city council adopted the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance (ARO) that enabled the conversion of commercial buildings constructed in the downtown area in...more
Several modest amendments to CEQA took effect on Jan. 1, 2024. Our CEQA News You Can Use team summarized a few of changes to keep in mind in the new year....more
In a published opinion filed on January 17, 2024, the Second District Court of Appeal (Div. 5) reversed a trial court judgment overturning a mitigated negative declaration (MND) and requiring an EIR for a 42-single family...more
2023 served up roughly the same number of published appellate CEQA cases as 2022 with a defense win percentage of over 80 percent, which has been the case in many, if not all, of the past ten years. A prominent theme of...more
The 2023 legislative session culminated in Governor Newsom signing dozens of land use bills. This post discusses the most important. The Legislature continued its multifaceted approach to addressing the housing crisis, with...more
In Tsakopoulos Investments v. County of Sacramento (2023) 95 Cal. App. 5th 280, the Third District Court of Appeal (“Court”) upheld the County of Sacramento’s (“County”) certification of the Mather South Community Master Plan...more
City of Los Angeles - The Processes and Procedures Ordinance Becomes Operative January 22, 2024 - The city council adopted the Processes and Procedures Ordinance amending the Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) to...more
The Sixth District Court of Appeal, in Santa Rita Union School District v. City of Salinas (2023), 94 Cal.App.5th 298, reversed the lower court, finding that the City of Salinas’ (“City”) final programmatic environmental...more
The 2023 California Legislative session, like the last several, saw the enactment of a large number of significant new housing production laws. (See Holland & Knight's previous annual recaps of California Housing Laws in the...more
In a partially published opinion filed September 20, 2023, the First District Court of Appeal (Div. 3) affirmed the Alameda County Superior Court’s judgments denying writ petitions in three partially consolidated CEQA actions...more
A recent court decision provides guidance to lead agencies seeking to comply with CEQA requirements related to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In Tsakopoulos Investments, LLC v. County of Sacramento, the Third District Court...more
In a partially published opinion filed on September 7, 2023, the Third District Court of Appeal affirmed a judgment denying a CEQA challenge to Sacramento County’s approval of a mixed-use development project known as the...more
CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY ACT (CEQA) - Save Our Access v. City of San Diego (4th. App. Dist., June 2023) - This case involved a challenge to the City of San Diego’s approval of a ballot measure to remove a community...more
On July 7, 2023, following a request for publication made on behalf of the California Building Industry Association, the Building Industry Association of the Bay Area, and the California Business Properties Association, the...more
In late June, California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal upheld a Superior Court decision in Save Our Access v. City of San Diego, providing clarity for determining when a “later activity” is beyond the scope of an existing...more
CITY OF LOS ANGELES - Site Plan Review Exemption for Affordable Housing - On June 30, 2023, the city council adopted an amendment to the Site Plan Review Ordinance to exempt deed-restricted affordable housing units from...more
In a published opinion filed June 23, 2023, the Fourth District Court of Appeal (Div. 1) affirmed a judgment granting a writ of mandate directing the City of San Diego (City) to set aside its approvals of an ordinance...more
The Court of Appeal upheld the City’s determination that compensatory mitigation for the loss of a historic building in the form of funding of other historic preservation was not feasible because there were no other buildings...more
In this alert, Brownstein outlines Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest swing at the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and provides the updates (and potentially what to expect) regarding two new bills introduced by Sen. Scott...more
Noisy college students, the new CEQA impact? Would you be surprised to learn that college students can throw noisy parties? Uh, no, but it may be a surprise that they constitute a potentially significant environmental impact...more
Plaintiff did not exhaust administrative remedies when challenging the City’s approval of a homeowner’s development project on the ground that a Class 1 categorical exemption was inapplicable. Arcadians for Environmental...more