A state appellate court has upheld the environmental impact report for expansion of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It found that project opponents had forfeited most of their claims because they had failed to raise them at the administrative level. The court also ruled that the range of project alternatives that the lab considered, within a carefully articulated range of project objectives, was adequate.

In supporting the City of Stockton's refusal to accept a lawsuit filed by a citizens group against a proposed big-box store, the California Supreme Court has, for the second time in two months, made clear that if a public agency provides notice of a California Environmental Quality Act decision, legal challenges to that decision may be barred by the shortest statute of limitations, among several that the CEQA statute provides for, applies to legal challenges regardless of the context of the challenge.

The California Supreme Court has ruled that a project's air impacts are to be measured against existing ambient conditions, not against a permitted level of operations for the emitter.

Upholding a 27-year-old California Supreme Court determination, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled that local agencies may impose a fee for the filing of an administrative appeal of a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) decision.

In yet another California Environmental Quality Act case involving whether an agreement between a tribe and a city constitutes a "project," the First District Court of Appeal has held that the law did not apply to an agreement requiring a city's formal support of a proposed casino in exchange for the tribe's funding of undefined city services and improvements.

California Environmental Quality Act lawsuits may be the next victims of the state's ongoing recession. Democratic and Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation that follows up on Gov. Schwarzenegger's call to exempt 100 projects from judicial challenge based on the environmental law. Citing the ongoing recession, both supporters and opponents of the idea say this just might be the year that lawmakers are willing to take a bold strike at CEQA.

The filing of a notice of determination triggers a 30-day statute of limitations for all California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) challenges to any decision announced in the notice, regardless of the nature of the alleged CEQA violation, the state Supreme Court has ruled.

In a decision filed on February 11, 2010, in Committee for Green Foothills v. Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, the unanimous Supreme Court reversed the Sixth District Court of Appeal, which had ruled that a 180-day statute of limitations applied in the case.

The shelf life of mitigation measures may readily outlast the lives of the projects to which the mitigations are attached, according to the Court of Appeal for the First Appellate District.

While the fact pattern in the case at hand was specific to timber harvesting and the conversion of property, the court's holding has application in the broader world of all California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) reviews.

A coalition of plastic bag producers avoided, at least for the moment, a major blow to business by using the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to delay implementation of an ordinance banning the distribution of plastic bags in the City of Manhattan Beach.

Opponents and supporters of a proposed luxury resort and housing development in the City of Healdsburg have signed an agreement outlining what a new environmental impact report should address.