The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a more expansive legal standard for exactions. But on remand, a California appellate court has found that the "averaging" system used in El Dorado County meets the narrower legal tests from the Nollan and Dolan cases.
The state's environmental agencies may be insulated from the new ruling stripping federal administrative agencies of power -- and they're picking up the slack. But do they have the capacity and expertise to do the job?
By taking a development fee case from El Dorado County, the U.S. Supreme Court may have the chance to narrow current limitations on exactions -- or get rid of them altogether.
The justices have taken aim at the "substantive due process" argument -- which landowners have always tried to use to overturn land use decisions they don't like.
Also: Statute of limitations on the Mitigation Fee Act, a request to depublish the Millenium Hollywood case, and the U.S. Supreme decline to hear a takings case from Massachusetts involving a local wetlands ordinance.