CEQA Year In Review 2015

In 2015 the California appellate courts continued to chart new ground as they grappled with some of CEQA’s most difficult and controversial questions. The Supreme Court of California led the way, issuing four opinions on hotly contested issues. For the first time, the court addressed the problematic question of what thresholds of significance should be used to measure the significance of greenhouse gas emissions. In a decision that will likely please only a few, the court blessed consistency with AB 32’s emissions reduction goal as an appropriate standard, but provided little guidance on how agencies might show consistency for specific projects. On the other hand, the court issued two decisions that place reasonable, common-sense limits on CEQA’s reach. In one decision the court set constraints on the ability of project opponents to contest categorical exemption determinations by asserting that significant impacts will occur due to unusual circumstances. In the other decision, the court put an end to the counter-intuitive, but persistent, argument that CEQA extends beyond a project’s effects on the environment to take in the environment’s effects on the project. In its remaining decision, the court held that a state university cannot use the legislature’s failure to appropriate earmarked funds as an excuse to avoid adopting mitigation measures for off-site impacts, but it did not decide when a public agency can reject a proposed mitigation measure as infeasible due to budgetary constraints.

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DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

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