On-Demand Webinar | Charting a Course for Offshore Wind Energy in California
[WEBINAR] Update on the California Environmental Quality Act: What’s New for 2018
[WEBINAR] Building a Solar Energy Project in 2018
How Trump's Infrastructure Plan Impacts the Energy Industry
BB&K's Charity Schiller Discusses CEQA Baseline
To address the housing crisis in California, Senate Bill 684 (SB 684), passed in 2023 but effective as of July 1, 2024, aims to simplify the approval process for small-scale for-sale housing projects, facilitate a quicker...more
In an opinion filed September 13, and modified and certified for publication on October 6, 2023, the Fourth District Court of Appeal (Div. 3) affirmed the trial court’s judgment denying a CEQA writ petition challenging the...more
In an opinion filed June 28, 2023, and later ordered published on July 25, 2023, the Second District Court of Appeal (Div. 5) affirmed a judgment granting a writ of mandate setting aside (1) the City of Los Angeles’ (City)...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
Los Angeles City Planning and Department of Building and Safety - COVID-19 Emergency Public Order on Tolling and Time Limits Rescinded - On March 21, 2020, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti issued a COVID-19 emergency public order to...more
In a published opinion filed March 8, 2023, the Second District Court of Appeal (Division 8) affirmed the trial court’s judgment denying writ relief in a lawsuit challenging approval of a CEQA-exempt eldercare facility...more
In a published decision filed February 16, 2023, the Second District Court of Appeal (Division 7) affirmed a judgment denying a CEQA writ petition challenging approval of a single-family home expansion project because the...more
In a published opinion filed February 6, 2023, the Fourth District Court of Appeal (Div. 3) affirmed a judgment setting aside an addendum to a 2010 program EIR (PEIR) and accompanying approvals for a 275,000-square foot...more
In Citizens’ Committee to Complete the Refuge v. City of Newark (2021) 74 Cal.App.5th 460, the First District Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s ruling that a residential project in a specific plan area in the city of...more
As we rapidly approach the end of a year of COVID-related challenges and uncertainties, CEQA practitioners may want to review the year’s key legislation impacting CEQA and its application, which was contained in the handful...more
A few months ago, we reported on a Court of Appeal decision, Bottini v. City of San Diego, where the Court held that delays resulting from a governmental agency’s improper denial of a permit application for a new development...more
Land Use and Development Case Summaries (short form) - 1. PLANNING AND ZONING - CENTER FOR COMMUNITY ACTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE V. CITY OF MORENO VALLEY, 26 Cal. App. 5th 689 (2018) - Based on the language and...more
The Fourth District Court of Appeal held that the project baseline under CEQA for construction of a new home did not include demolition of a potential historic structure that had occurred before submittal of a permit...more
In the Spring of last year, I posted an analysis of what I called the Third District Court of Appeal’s “exceptionally thorough and well-reasoned opinion” in Citizens for Environmental Responsibility v. State of California ex...more
In Berkeley Hillside Preservation v. City of Berkeley, No. S201116 (Cal. Mar. 2, 2015) (slip op), the California Supreme Court overturned an appeals court ruling that banned developers from using an exemption under the...more
On Monday March 2, the California Supreme Court handed down a decision allowing a Berkeley home builder to use an exemption from detailed environmental assessment under the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) in its...more
The California Supreme Court’s involvement in CEQA cases has been relatively limited since he statute’s enactment in 1970, with the court taking review of at most one or two appellate court decisions a year. The last two...more
Recently, the court in Rominger v. County of Colusa found that a lead agency which approved a mitigated negative declaration for a project, can take the seemingly inconsistent position that the proposed project was not a...more