Medical MarijuanaOn January 11, the California Supreme Court granted review of the Fourth Appellate District’s decision in Union of Medical Marijuana Patients, Inc. v. City of San Diego (2016) 4 Cal.App.5th 103.  The two issues to be decided by the Court are as follows:

  • Is the enactment of a zoning ordinance categorically a “project” within the meaning of CEQA?
  • Is the enactment of a zoning ordinance allowing the operation of medical marijuana cooperatives in certain areas the type of activity that may cause a reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change to the environment?

In Japanese Village, LLC v. Federal Transit Administration, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 21700, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s rulings and rejected NEPA challenges to the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (“Metro”) approval for a 1.9-mile light rail extension line in downtown Los Angeles. The project was proposed to be funded by the…

In United Auburn Indian Community of the Auburn Rancheria v. Brown (2016) 4 Cal.App.5th 36, the Third Appellate District affirmed the trial court and rejected challenges to Governor Brown’s concurrence in a determination made by the Secretary of the Interior (“Secretary”) concerning the Enterprise Rancheria of Maidu Indians of California’s (“Enterprise Tribe”) request to acquire…

In Mission Bay Alliance v. Office of Community Investment & Infrastructure (2016) 6 Cal. App. 5th 160, the First Appellate District affirmed the trial court’s ruling that the Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure (OCII) complied fully with CEQA in approving a proposed 488,000-square foot multipurpose event center, which would serve as the Golden State…

In an unpublished opinion, Ventura Realty & Investment Company v. City of San Buenaventura, 2016 Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 7486, the Second Appellate District affirmed the trial court’s rulings and upheld the City of San Buenaventura’s (City) approval of changes to a plan to redevelop a 15-acre hospital district (Hospital Plan) proposed by Community…

Lake Tahoe WaterIn Sierra Club v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s summary judgment in favor of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (“TRPA”), finding that the TRPA’s final Environmental Impact Statement (“EIS”) for the agency’s Regional Plan Update (“RPU”) sufficiently addressed localized impacts on soil erosion and water quality. The 2012 RPU, among other things, restricted future development to areas that are already developed, and limited the extent of development in those areas. Plaintiffs, Sierra Club and Friends of the West Shore, challenged the RPU’s EIS, principally arguing that the RPU failed to adequately address the localized effects of the runoff created by the plan’s permitted development, and that the RPU improperly assumed that Best Management Practices (“BMPs”) would reduce water quality impacts of concentrated development.

Medical Marijuana in jarIn its October 14 decision in Union of Medical Marijuana Patients, Inc. v. City of San Diego, the Fourth Appellate District weighed in for the second time this year on whether a city ordinance regulating medical marijuana dispensaries is subject to CEQA review. As in the first case, which was brought by the same petitioner (Union of Medical Marijuana Patients, Inc. v. City of Upland, decided on March 25), the appeals court held that the ordinance was not a “project” for purposes of CEQA.

On October 7, I had the privilege of presenting the annual CEQA and Land Use Litigation Update at the League of California Cities’ Annual Conference & Expo in Long Beach. The Annual Conference is the state’s largest gathering of city officials from throughout California, and addresses a host of cutting-edge legal issues in the field…

Cost RecoveryOn, September 12, 2015, the Fifth District Court of Appeal issued its opinion in Citizens for Ceres v. City of Ceres (2016) _Cal.App.5th_.  The opinion authorized real-parties-in-interest to recover costs of record preparation, as long as the record was prepared in a manner prescribed by Public Resources Code section 21167.6. The petitioners in this action challenged the EIR for a new shopping center anchored by a Wal-Mart on a variety of grounds, including that the project did not adequately mitigate for urban decay impacts and that the EIR failed to set forth an adequate long-term plan for solid waste disposal. The trial court upheld the EIR on all grounds but rejected real-party-in-interest Wal-Mart’s motion to recover costs associated with preparing the record, based on Public Resources Code section 21167.6 and the principles elucidated in Hayward Area Planning Assn. v. City of Hayward (2005) 128 Cal.App.4th 176.