Cal Supremes Remind Us CEQA Is Just A Law

The California Supreme Court has reminded everybody that the California Environmental Quality Act is just a law – one that can be changed by the legislature at any time. On Thursday, June 6, the court finally ruled in the long-awaited “People’s Park” case – the one where an appellate court ruled last year that noisy students can be a “significant impact” under CEQA, possibly triggering the need for an environmental impact report and mitigation. But the Supreme Court went the other way, overturning the lower court decision and clearing the way for construction of student residences in People’s Park. Enraged that more student housing at UC Berkeley might be put at risk by CEQA the Legislature quickly passed – and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed – AB 1307, which specifically stated that noisy college students aren’t a significant impact on residential projects and that the University of California can’t be required to consider alternative sites under some circumstances. Both these provisions were targeted directly at the People’s Park case, as innumerable legislators made clear at the time. That law made UC’s appeal to the Cal Supremes in the People’s Park case a bit anticlimactic. The plaintiff in the case – a group known as ‘Make UC A Good Neighbor” – acknowledged that AB 1307 applied to the project they were challenging, a student residence project in People’s Park in Berkeley. But the group still claimed that a noisy students argument should apply to the environmental review of UC Berkeley’s Long Range Development Plan, or LRDP, because that isn’t a “residential project”. And the plaintiff also argued that the Cal Supremes should weigh in on the alternatives question.

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