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State laws override local land-use ballot measures.

In a new battle between the Tejon Ranch Company and environmentalists, an appellate court has ruled that Los Angeles County’s environmental impact report for the Centennial community in Antelope Valley was misleading because it tried to count “upstream” reductions in greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the state’s cap-and-trade program.

Does adopting a Housing Element violate the California Environmental Quality Act?

Only days after one judge ordered the City of Fresno to approve a housing project it had denied, another judge has ordered the city to redo the environmental impact report on one of the largest-ever Costco projects. Among other things, the court ruling shows that zoning ordinances are having a difficult time dealing with the increasingly blurry line between large retail stores and warehouses.

In a followup to last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling, an appellate court in Sacramento has ruled that El Dorado County’s traffic impact fee system is constitutional and meets the so-called Nollan/Dolan standard. The case is almost certain to be appealed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing the El Dorado County property owner who brought the suit.

A Los Angeles judge has ruled that the Beverly Hills housing element is “deficient” in a variety of ways, including the city’s calculations of potential housing development based on its current density standards. The city has announced plans to appeal the ruling, but if ity loses on appeal that could open the door for several builder’s remedy projects that have been proposed by a single developer.

A water deal between Fairfield and Solano County – which will facilitate development outside Fairfield’s urban limit line – has been upheld by an appellate court in a published decision, meaning it can be used as precedent in other cases. Opponents framed the whole issue as a possible prelude to a similar deal for California Forever, though this seems unlikely, at least at this point.

SB 9 isn’t unconstitutional – at least as it is applied to general law cities, an appellate court has ruled.

Huntington Beach’s status as a charter city doesn’t get it out from under state housing law, including the provision that the city must adopt a compliant housing element within 120 days of a court order to do so.

As part of a settlement agreement with the state, the City of Norwalk has repealed a moratorium on homeless shelters and similar facilities. The city must also establish a housing trust fund and file regularly reports with the Department of Housing and Community Development. The state promised to recertify Norwalk’s housing element, which was revoked after the city adopted the moratorium.

A Jurupa Valley landowner seeking to build a 10-unit-per-acre mobile home park in a 2-unit-per-acre residential zone doesn’t need a general plan amendment to move the application forward, an appellate court has ruled. The court seemed to place the zoning code above the general plan, but it also found provisions in the general plan that seemed to support the project.

A suburban-style Roseville shopping center properly qualifies for an Article 32 infill exemption from the California Environmental Quality Act, an appellate court has ruled in an unpublished decision. The shopping center’s exemption had originally been challenged by nearby residents because a fast-food restaurant was included, saying that was an “unusual circumstance” that permitted as exception to the exemption. When the fast-food restaurant was removed from the project, the residents switched to the argument that the possibility of traffic cutting through the adjacent neighborhood constituted an unusual circumstance. But the Third District Court of Appeal ruled for the city. While acknowledging that nearby residents feared cut-through traffic on Camino Real Way, an adjacent private road, the court wrote, “the record contains no factual foundation supporting the proposition that the approved project will create significant traffic-related safety issues for residents of the subdivision due to increased traffic on Camino Real Way from non-residents.” The case arose from a proposal to construct a Grocery Outlet supermarket that included three parcels allowing three separate businesses, including a fast-food restaurant with a drive-through. During the approval process, neighbors argued that the fast-food restaurant would create significant traffic and noise impacts that would disqualify the use of Article 32 exemption. However, the city concluded that it could not approve the fast-food restaurant and retain the Article 32 exemption. Subsequently the developer withdrew the fast-food restaurant from the project, though a future retail or restaurant development on that project remained possible. In court, the neighbors argued that the possibility of cut-through traffic was an unusual circumstance and that the city piecemealed the project by excluding the fast-food pad from its decision to apply the exemption.