The First District Court of Appeal has argued that Humbolt County did not create a taking of property by requiring the owners of a mobile home underneath an airport flight path to provide an overflight easement in exchange for a permit to build a carport and porch that had been illegally built by the previous owners of the property.

The California Supreme Court has agreed to review an appellate ruling that Priceline, Expedia, Travelocity and similar "online travel companies" (OTCs) did not have to pay San Diego hotel tax on income they derived using a "merchant model" approach to marketing local hotel rooms. The Second District ruled that if an OTC contracts with a hotel for a block of rooms at a fixed wholesale rate, and then retails them to guests at higher prices, then city hotel tax is due only on the wholesale rate, not the difference the OTC receives. The case is In Re Transient Occupancy Tax Cases , also referred to as City of San Diego v. Priceline . It addresses a coordinated group of cases involving several online hotel room brokers. The Second District decision, as amended on rehearing March 27, is at http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/B243800A.PDF. The ruling looks back strongly to two prior cases in Santa Monica and Anaheim, as shown in the Second District's online docket at http://bit.ly/UPLUTn. The Supreme Court online docket is at http://bit.ly/1soYBAy. For further details see http://www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3464. The League of California Cities posted a comment welcoming the review decision, which it had supported in an amicus letter, at http://bit.ly/1o88aV9.

California State University East Bay undertook a dual-purpose environmental impact report for its campus master plan and two construction projects, meant to enable the campus to grow from roughly 12,000 to 18,000 students in the next 30 years. The construction projects consisted of a housing complex and a parking structure. The EIR included alternatives at both the master plan and construction project level. The City of Hayward and public interest groups filed suit challenging the sufficiency of the EIR, apparently out of concern for costs that it might bear, such as those for fire and safety, when the university expands. The trial court found the EIR to be deficient and issued an order granting the petition for writ. The university subsequently appealed. With the exception of one issue, the appellate court reversed the trial court in City of Hayward v. Trustees of the California State University, generally upholding the sufficiency of the EIR. The appellate decision provides helpful guidance in the use of a programmatic EIR (for the master plan) and recognizes that despite the somewhat predictable claim of the project opponents that more detail should have been included in the programmatic document, that those details were properly left for the next CEQA tier. The appellate court found that substantial evidence supported the conclusion that the construction of an additional fire station would have less than significant impacts as the anticipated construction of a station in an urban setting was not anticipated to cause impact. Notably, the appellate court concluded that the lead agency was not required to mitigate for the socio-economic impacts such as station staffing. The court wrote, "The need for additional fire protection services is not an environmental impact that CEQA requires a project proponent to mitigate ." With respect to traffic impacts, the master plan EIR was a programmatic EIR, and was not required to analyze neighborhood street impacts as those impacts would be analyzed in conjunction with the next CEQA review and consideration of specific projects, which would be the basis for more detailed evaluation. A mitigation requirement for a transportation demand management program did not result in deferred mitigation, as the mitigation measure included a required performance standard. However, there was a lack of substantial evidence to support the EIR's conclusion that the impacts to area parks would be less than significant and on that basis the matter was remanded back for additional analysis as part of a revised EIR. The Case: City of Hayward v. Trustees of the California State University  (.pdf) (June 28, 2012, A131412) ___Cal.App.4th ___; 2012 Cal.App. LEXIS 761

A city council that is not paying attention during a quasi-judicial land use hearing does not provide due process to a permit applicant, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled.

If the oral argument is any indication, the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to rule against a landowner in Florida who filed a takings lawsuit against an Orlando-area water district – turning what appeared to be an easy victory for property rights advocates into a loss.

The Second District Court of Appeal has ruled that the City of Los Angeles's ban on billboards advertising offsite businesses is not content-based and therefore not subject to the "strict scrutiny" test under free-speech clauses in either the U.S. or California constitution.

Overturning a trial judge, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled that the private water company Cadiz Inc. and two public agencies did not violate the California Environmental Quality Act in moving forward a groundwater pumping and restoration project in San Bernardino County.

An outdoor advertising company that erected a billboard without permits in the City of Corona was not discriminated against and did not have its constitutional rights violated by the city's action, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled.

Under Proposition 22, neither the state Board of Equalization nor a county auditor-controller can constitutionally withhold tax funds as part of a redevelopment dispute, as called for by AB 1484, the 2012 bill that cleaned up the redevelopment wind-down, the Third District Court of Appeal has ruled.

The Fourth District Court of Appeal has blocked the City of Anaheim's attempt to build a surface parking lot on a property adjacent to two new hotels rather than a parking structure, as was implied in a conditional use permit the city approved in 1999.

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.

funds as part of a redevelopment dispute even though a previous ruling concluded that the state cannot.