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In a battle between rival developers over the California Environmental Quality Act, the prominent Sacramento developer Tsakopoulos Investments has lost an appellate court ruling challenging the environment analysis on a nearby developer’s project. In the published portion of the case, the Third District Court of Appeal concluded that Sacramento County properly conducted its climate change analysis on the neighboring project and did not use methodologies recently discredited by both the California Supreme Court and the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Sacramento.

Short-term rentals are not by definition development projects that require a coastal development permit in the coastal zone.

Environmentalists have lost the latest skirmish in the seemingly interminable battle over development of Fanita Ranch in the San Diego County community of Santee – and in the process an appellate court may have plowed important new ground about what’s acceptable mitigation for lost California gnatcatcher habitat. The latest Fanita Ranch proposal would disrupt 400 acres of gnatcatcher habitat but preserve 1,000 acres. An environmental group called Preserve Wild Santee appealed a judge’s ruling that adequately protected gnatcatcher habitat, saying that the mitigation plan simply “preserves what’s left”. But the Fourth District Court of Appeal in San Diego affirmed the judge’s ruling, saying that there is the California Environmental Quality Act contains no requirement that lost habitat be actually replaced on a one-to-one basis. “CEQA does not required a complete offset for lost habitat, and .. conservation easements can mitigate such loses by substantially lessening the impacts to a particular species’ habitat,” wrote Justice Julia C. Kelety for a three-judge panel of the appellate court.

A developer has sued the City of Davis over a proposed housing project, claiming that the city has dragged its feet in such a way that the project has been effectively denied. The developer has also filed a builder’s remedy application for the project. In response, the city claims it has not denied the project and is processing the application.

A Los Angeles judge has ruled that the addition of a hotel (as well as three additional stories) and the subtraction of some affordable housing units doesn’t cause a Beverly Hills developer’s vested rights under the builder’s remedy law to expire. Rather, he wrote, the two changes fall – just barely – within the law’s provision that a developer can change both affordable housing and square footage by 20% without surrendering the vested rights. This marks the second time in recent months that an L.A. judge has relied heavily on interpretations from the Department of Housing & Community Development on the vested rights question. Judge James Chalfant recently ruled a 90-day window to respond to incompleteness letters resets each time a new letter is received, based in part on HCD’s interpretation. (This issue was explored more fully in CP&DR ’s coverage of related cases here .) “This is the first opinion I've seen in which the principle of deference to HCD has been extended beyond the Housing Element Law, the administration of which has long been delegated to HCD,” UC Davis law professor Chris Elmendorf, an expert on California land use and housing law, wrote on X . The ruling is at least the second setback that L.A. Superior Court Judge Curtis Kin has dealt to the City of Beverly Hills on builder’s remedy projects. In early 2024, Kin temporarily suspended all of Beverly Hills’ permitting power because the city did not have a compliant housing element according to HCD. ( CP&DR ’s coverage of that ruling can be found here .) The current case involves a proposed projct by developer Leo Pustilnikov, who has proposed several builder’s remedy projects in Beverly Hills and has tangled extensively in court with both Beverly Hills and Redondo Beach. Under the Housing Accountability Act, Pustilnikow filed a preliminary application for a 16-story builder’s remedy project on Linden Drive in Beverly Hills that called for 200 residential units including 40 deed-restricted affordable units. Under the Housing Accountability Act, a preliminary application vests the developer’s right to build under the rules in effect at the time. A builder’s remedy project, which is permitted if the jurisdiction does not have a compliant housing element at the time the application is filed, does not have to follow a city’s general plan and zoning limitations. Pustilnikov subsequently changed his project to be 19 stories with fewer housing units, including only 33 deed-restricted affordable units, and a hotel. The city claimed that the change rendered the preliminary application invalid, thus making the project subject to discretionary approval. The city and the developer then went back and forth repeatedly over the city’s contention that the project was incomplete. In July, the city council rejected the project. (Previous CP&DR coverage of the council’s action can be found here .) Kin’s ruling came a month later in a case that had been filed by Californians For Homeownership, a group sponsored by the California Association of Realtors. In the ruling, Kin sided with the plaintiffs and rejected all of the city’s arguments. Kin noted that the Housing Accountability Act permits a 20% change in affordable housing and square footage without endangering a project’s vested rights. He noted in the ruling that the revised project including the hotel increased square footage by 19.9 and decreased the affordable housing by 17.5%, thus falling within the 20% threshold on both counties. Beverly Hills also argued that the addition of the hotel created a change of use in the project that triggered discretionary review and eliminated the vested rights. But Kin disagreed. Mixed-use projects are permitted if two-thirds of the square footage of the project is residential. “Allowing the City to disregard a Preliminary Application based on its view of whether there has been a “substantial” change in the project exposes Applicant to the subjective whims and caprice of the City,” Kin wrote. He relied in part on HCD communications to the city, which stated that the hotel was a “modification” that do not void the vesting created by the preliminary application submittal.” The Case: Californians for Homeownershp v. City of Beverly Hills , Los Angeles County Superior Court No. 24STCP02082 (filed August 12, 2025) The Lawyers: For Californians for Home Ownership: Matt Gelfand,

In an unpublished appellate ruling, a unanimous three-judge panel has ruled that the San Diego’s ordinance reducing parking standards for multifamily developments near transit stops is not subject to the California Environmental Quality Act. The city was sued by CREED-21, a group typically represented by frequent CEQA litigator Cory Briggs.

It’s clear that under the Housing Accountability Act a city must approve a housing project if the project is consistent with the general plan – but the zoning is inconsistent with the general plan.

Culver City’s “anti-mansionization” ordinance violates the Housing Accountability Act by reducing the amount of floor-area ratio permitted in single-family zones, an appellate court has ruled.

An overlay zone designed to protect wildlife migration corridors is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, an appellate court has ruled. The court also ruled that the overlay zone is not covered by the Surface Mining And Reclamation Act, even though the overlay zone covers some 10,000 acres of land that contains mineral resources.

A federal judge has dismissed Huntington Beach’s lawsuit challenging California’s housing laws, saying that a political subdivision of the state cannot sue the state claiming violations of the 14 th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The city had claimed among other things that the elimination of judicial review of the Regional Housing Needs Assessment process violated its 14 th Amendment due process rights.

Does a beachfront mobilehome owner have to spend $2 million to tear down and reconstruct a two-story addition if owner built the addition without a coastal permit?

In a case with a bunch of unusual twists and turns, a judge in Los Angeles has ruled that Redondo Beach’s housing element is subject to a vote based on an existing growth-management voter requirement. But the judge also ruled that state law pre-empts the local voter requirement.