As California seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the state's industries in order to implement provisions of California's Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (Assembly Bill 32), entities and trade groups both inside and outside the state have looked to the "dormant" Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution as a legal means to challenge those efforts. The dormant clause implies that states cannot take actions that would, implicitly or explicitly, restrict interstate commerce - such as when California legally compels residents to consume less fuel.

Everybody always loves to complain about the California Environmental Quality Act, but despite all the complaining we don’t now much about how effective it really is and what all the CEQA activity adds up to.

California's Fifth Appellate District on July 3 upheld the Westlands Water District's 2012 interim renewal contracts for Central Valley Project water from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, finding the changes they represented were exempt from CEQA review sought by environmental groups.

In  Quail Lakes Owners Assn. v. Kozina,  the Court of Appeal for the Third Appellate District affirmed a trial court's decision to grant a verified petition by a homeowners' association for an order under Civil Code section 1356. The petition asked to modify the association's governing laws to reduce a supermajority voting restriction.

The First District Court of Appeal has upheld Calfire's Nonindustrial Timber Management Plan to permit logging of a 17-acre parcel of land in Mendocino County. The First District also rejected the Center for Biological Diversity's claim that the California Department of Fish & Wildlife can be sued under the California Environmental Quality Act over its role in the approval of the NMTP.

When deciding whether to award a public litigant its attorneys' fees against another public entity under Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5, the trial court may only consider the public litigant's "pecuniary interests and the pecuniary interests of its constituents" in determining the third requirement of that statute.  The court may not consider the nonpecuniary motives of the public litigant in bringing the lawsuit.

Here’s a CEQA Catch-22 for you:

In a ruling critical to moving forward Sacramento's downtown basketball arena, the Third District Court of Appeal has given the City of Sacramento a clean win in a wide-ranging CEQA challenge brought by a group of individual environmentalists.

The environmental review for a proposed Sacramento housing project that apparently conflicted with planned unit development zoning for the site was inadequate, an appellate court has ruled. Instead of adopting a mitigated negative declaration, the City of Sacramento should have prepared an environmental impact report that addressed the conflict between the project and the PUD's objectives, the court ruled.

Rarely does anything with a lawn, a photovoltaic canopy, a “great lawn," no fewer than 13 design collaborators, and an estimated $50 million budget, qualify as simple. But, relative to its competitors, that’s exactly what the winning design in the Pershing Square Renew competition is.

In a split decision, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has upheld the Coastal Commission's conditions on two property owners' reconstruction of a seawall in Encinitas after it was destroyed in a storm, including limiting the new seawall's permit to a 20-year term.

In a case that would appear on its face to conflict with a different appellate ruling filed just two weeks ago, the Sixth District Court of Appeal has ruled that a groundwater pump charge is a property-related charge subject to Proposition 218.