How Californians Are Weaponizing Environmental Law

The Atlantic published an article describing how the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has been used to stymie development across the state, especially in housing. Adopted in 1970, CEQA's purpose seems strictly informational, allowing projects to go forward as long as legislatures and agencies acknowledge, disclose and mitigate the a project's environmental impacts. However, in practice it has transformed development in California, leading to costly litigation and thousand-page environment impact reports covering topics only tenuously tied to the environment. The widespread abuse of CEQA litigation has only worsened the state's affordable housing crisis. The article concludes by proposing solutions to the now widely recognized problems. A Holland & Knight alert written by attorneys Jennifer Hernandez and David Friedman and a separate article written by Ms. Hernandez were referenced in The Atlantic's article.

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