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In the latest housing element skirmish from Redondo Beach, an appellate court has ruled that the city’s mixed-use overlay district doesn’t meet the requirements of the housing element law.

An appellate court has upheld San Diego’s revised impact fee ordinance, saying it meets the Nollan/Dolan standard. But the unpublished ruling depends heavily on the Ehrlich ruling from the 1980s, which the U.S. Supreme Court recently repudiated.

Eden Housing has been trying to build an affordable housing project in Downtown Livermore since 2018. Two local groups with the same backer have gone to court with different lawsuits to stop the project – or at least move it.

San Diego’s Midway redevelopment project has been held up by litigation again, as an appellate court has ruled – for the second time – that the city did not prepare adequate environmental documents in preparation for a ballot measure lifting the city’s 30-foot coastal height limit. In reversing a lower court ruling, the appellate court also concluded that the state’s reforms of the California Environmental Quality Act adopted back in June do not apply to the Midway plan.

The acrimonious battle between the City of San Diego and La Jolla citizens who want a separate city continues in court – with the citizens recently winning a battle to throw out a lawsuit from the city on anti-SLAPP grounds. The judge in the case essentially concluded that the citizens’ attempt to move the La Jolla incorporation attempt forward constitutes free speech.

The owners of a Long Beach gas station wanted to add a car wash. But the property is adjacent to a school and in close proximity to several other gas stations, and Long Beach Unified claimed that the air quality analysis under the California Environmental Quality Act was inadequate.

A Santa Barbara developer with a pending builder’s remedy project has sued the state in federal court, claiming a new law violates the developer’s constitutional rights. The developer’s lawsuit also names the City of Santa Barbara as a defendant, claiming that the city’s overlay zone does not conform with state Housing Element law. The overlay claim builds on a recent appellate court ruling from Redondo Beach. (Previous CP&DR coverage about that ruling can be found here .)

The City of Fresno has been ordered to overturn its decision to deny a multifamily housing project and instead approve the 82-unit project.

A few months ago, a Los Angeles judge ruled – in a fairly technical opinion – that SB 9, the lot-split law, is unconstitutional for charter cities. But after a new state law was passed clarifying SB 9’s intent, an appellate court has tossed the case back to the judge to reconsider it. Another appellate ruling declaring SB 9 constitutional as it relates to general-law cities still stands. SB 9, which went into effect in 2022, essentially did away with binding single-family zoning in most parts of California. The law permits landowners build up to four units on their single-family parcel by to splitting their parcels in two and build two units on each of the resulting parcels, all by ministerial action. The bill was very controversial during legislative debate in 2021 and has received a lot of national publicity. However, its actual effect has been limited. Relatively few single-family parcel owners have chosen to go the SB 9 route. The general consensus is most single-family homeowners find it easier to add an accessory dwelling unit on the property, an action that is also available by ministerial approval thanks to a different state law. Decades ago, California declared that both a shortage of housing and a lack of affordable housing as matters of statewide concern, thereby allowing the state to override the California Constitution’s guarantee of local home rule. SB 9, however, mentioned only “affordable housing” and not “a lack of housing supply” as the justification for interfering with home rule. This was the basis of the constitutional challenge brought by several cities led by Redondo Beach. Other cities involved in the lawsuit include Carson, Cerritos, Torrance, and Whittier. That led Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Curtis Kin to rule in favor of the cities in 2024, saying that housing affordability and housing supply are not the same thing. ( CP&DR ’s coverage of Kin’s ruling can be found here. ) This year, however, the Legislature passed SB 450, which expanded the purpose of SB 9 to include housing supply as well as affordability. For this reason, Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office argued that Kin’s ruling no longer applied. The Second District Court of Appeal agreed with Bonta and sent the case back to Kin. “We agree that the amended language of SB 450 is an intervening change in law that is entitled to consideration by the trial court in determining the constitutionality of the statute,” the court wrote. The appellate court also overturned Judge Kin’s award of $270,000 in attorney’s fees to the city and sent that issue back to him for reconsideration as well. Meanwhile, a different appellate court ruling stating that SB 9 applies to general law cities still stands. That ruling was issued by the Second District in January. ( CP&DR ’s coverage of that ruling can be found here .) The Case: City of Redondo Beach v. Bonta , No. B338990 (unpublished, issued November 12, 2025) The Lawyers: For Redondo Beach: Michelle L. Villarreal, Aleshire & Winder, mvillarreal@awattorneys.com For Attorney General’s Office: Kevin J. Kelly, kevin.kelly@doj.ca.gov , Deputy Attorney General

The University of San Francisco Health Center’s expansion plans are exempt from the City of San Francisco’s local development regulations – even though at least some of the expansion plans are intended to facilitate UCSF’s business goals rather than the university’s educational mission.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation has lost yet another appeal against the City of Los Angeles, this time in a case that challenged the environmental impact report associated with a proposed mixed-use highrise proposed by the owners of the Southern California Flower Market in the eastern part of Downtown Los Angeles. This continues a long string of appellate losses for the Foundation on housing issues. (See previous CP&DR coverage of AHF’s losses here , here , and here .)

In an ongoing dispute among commercial neighbors in Lafayette, a condominium developer appears to be besting an adjacent office building owner. Most recently the city got the go-ahead from an appellate court to use the infill exemption contained in the California Environmental Quality Act because the site doesn’t qualify for – in CEQA parlance – an exception to the exemption. Building on the  Berkeley Hillside case and other cases, the ruling appears to make it more difficult for project opponents to use the "unusual circumstance" exception to the infill exemption. The case came down to the dueling biologists – and which biologist made a more convincing legal argument to the appallate court. The case was originally unpublished but has now been published by the appellate court. A developer known as 3721 Land LLC obtained approval from the City of Lafayette to tear down a rehabilitation center on Mount Diablo Boulevard and replace it with a 12-unit condominium project. (During the approval process, one unit was shaved off of the original 13-unit proposal.) The city used a Class 32 infill exemption from CEQA on the project.