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 Sixth Appellate District, on May 10, 2023, published a decision in Preservation Action Council of San Jose v. City of San Jose (2023) __ Cal.App.5th __ upholding the City of San Jose’s certification of a final...more
CEQA Case Report: Understanding the Judicial Landscape for Development - In an opinion published on August 9, 2018, Protect Niles v. City of Fremont, Case No. A151645, the First Appellate District of the California Court...more
An application was made for a site plan to the Planning Board of the City of Poughkeepsie for a 24 two-bedroom unit condominium complex in four buildings on a 3.4 acre parcel adjacent to an historic district. ...more
As a follow up to a March 14, 2017 legal alert on proposed SEQR amendments, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (“DEC”) published a notice of revised rulemaking in the New York State Register on April...more
Citing the likelihood of repurposing Placerville’s historic downtown courthouse and evidence nearby businesses were not dependent on it, the First District Court of Appeal held that “urban decay” was not a reasonably...more
The Northern District of California recently dismissed RLUIPA claims filed by the California-Nevada Annual Conference of the Methodist Church (the “Conference”) against the City of San Francisco. The case revolves around the...more
Accepting a Permit “Under Protest” Does Not Work in the Coastal Zone - (Lynch v. California Coastal Commission (2014) 229 Cal. App. 4th 658): Why it matters: Lynch v. California Coastal Commission firmly dispels the...more