Of all the sustainable communities strategies adopted under SB 375, none has been so contentious in court as “Plan Bay Area,” the regional plan for the Bay Area devised by the Association of Bay Area Governments and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

The division of one parcel into four noncontiguous pieces via eminent domain does not automatically create four legal parcels and permit the landowner to avoid the Subdivision Map Act, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled.

A citizen group may yet be able to file a Brown Act lawsuit against the City of San Diego, challenging its past practice of permitting public comment on only day day of its weekly two-day city council meeting, according to a new ruling by the Second District Court of Appeal.

A couple of weeks ago, the satirical newspaper The Onion reported that the City of San Francisco was looking to relocate because its current location had become too expensive. Funny though this was, I expected the follow-up story to focus on the economic development incentive package being put together to keep San Francisco where it is.

The City of Newport Beach improperly permitted a councilmember who was openly opposed to a bar's permit to appeal the planning commission's decision granting the permit and to vote on the permit appeal, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled. The appellate court also ruled that the trial court should not have granted the city a preliminary injunction to block the bar from operating under the permit approved by the planning commission.

In repealing a medical marijuana ordinance that a referendum sought to overturn, the Kern County Board of Supervisors erred in also repealing the underlying ordinance that the referendum's backers were seeking to reinstate, the Fifth District Court of Appeal has ruled. It's the third appellate ruling in a medical marijuana zoning case to be issued in the last month.

A state law that prohibits charter cities from receiving state funds for a public construction project if it allows the contractors to not pay prevailing wage has been upheld by a split appellate court.

In a split decision, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled that the City of Carson acted properly in denying the subdivision of a mobile home park because this change in ownership structure was inconsistent with the general plan by placing at risk wetlands within the park, which were reclaimed from contaminated oil friends and are called out in the open space element of the city's general plan.

In a 61-page opinion, the Third District Court of Appeal has ruled that the Department of Fish & Wildlife's actions in managing coastal flooding around Lake Tolowa and Lake Earl in Del Norte County constituted a physical taking of the adjacent landowners' property.

The recent Brexit vote seemed a lot like the typical California NIMBY fight to me: Basically, a whole bunch of old white people who don’t like how society is evolving tried to shut the door, probably screwing their own children and grandchildren in the process.

Writing recently in Voice of San Diego , Maya Srikrishnan has documented what might be called – at least from my wizened perspective – the return of the coastal Southern California anti-growth initiative. In Del Mar, Costa Mesa, and Santa Monica – one coastal town in each SoCal coastal county – citizens have placed initiatives on this fall’s ballot to slow down growth or at least require that major projects must go before voters.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that The Presidio Trust can move forward with the construction of a 12-building complex commonly referred to as a "lodge" in the vicinity of the Main Parade Ground. In so doing, the court rejected arguments from the Sierra Club and a variety of historic preservation organizations that doing so would violate the Presidio Trust Act. The court also rejected the argument that the Presidio Trust's actions did not meet the consultation requirements contained in Section 110f of the National Historic Preservation Act.