After months of high drama, California Senate Bill 79 (“SB 79”) was signed by Governor Newsom on October 10—the latest salvo in a year of ambitious legislation to increase housing supply in California. Effective July 1, 2026 (within incorporated cities[1]), the new law opens new residential building opportunities near existing rail and bus stations in California’s most populous metropolitan areas.Continue Reading SB 79 – Major Changes to Transit-Oriented Development in California
California Senate Bill 92 (“SB 92”), introduced in January 2025 by Senator Catherine Blakespear and having been passed by both the California State Assembly and State Senate was approved by the Governor on October 10, 2025. SB 92 amends California’s Density Bonus Law (Government Code Section 65915 et seq.) (“SDBL”) to limit a developer’s ability to apply for concessions, incentives, and waivers of development standards for mixed-use projects that include nonresidential uses.Continue Reading Legislature Adopts Bill to Limit Density Bonus Law Benefits for Mixed-Use Projects
On Friday, September 19, 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a package of bills adopted by the California Legislature. Key among these were AB 1207 and SB 840, which extend the state’s Cap-and-Trade — now rebranded as the Cap-and-Invest — Program through 2045 while making modest changes to it.Continue Reading California Extends Carbon Market through 2045 with Modest Changes; Provides Market Stability and Reaffirms the State’s Climate Commitments
California’s Commercial Tenant Protection Act (SB-1103) took effect on January 1, 2025. Conceived as a transparency and displacement prevention measure for small businesses, the new law creates tenant protections for small enterprises and nonprofits leasing commercial property that resemble those more typically found in residential leases. A tenant who self-attests that it is a “Qualified Commercial Tenant” (“QCT”) within the meaning of SB-1103 may receive longer notice periods for rent increases and lease terminations, as well as new rights and remedies with respect to passthroughs of operational costs. Under certain circumstances, the law also requires landlords to provide translations for QCTs who negotiate leases in any of California’s five most common non-English languages.Continue Reading California SB-1103: What Landlords Need to Know About New Rights for Small Business Tenants
On Monday, June 30, 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law two bills, AB 130 and SB 131, which provide new exemptions from, and streamlines the process, under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). AB 130 creates a statutory exemption for qualifying infill housing projects, streamlines the CEQA review process for residential projects in the coastal zone, and provides procedural changes to the administrative review process to prevent unnecessary delays for new development projects. SB 131 focuses on accelerating public interest projects, such as clean water infrastructure, park and trail projects, and community support facility projects, by creating new exemption categories and streamlines processes for projects that would otherwise be CEQA-exempt but for a single condition. Both bills also include non-CEQA related provisions which seek to further support infill and public interest development.Continue Reading New CEQA Exemptions in 2025: Streamlining Housing & Infrastructure Development in California
On June 16, 2025, the San Diego City Council voted 5-4 to cap the number of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) that can be built on single-family lots. The decision reverses the City’s 2020 implementation of a program allowing developers to build a nearly unlimited number of ADUs—a robust incentive previously heralded as a solution to the City’s burgeoning housing affordability crisis. This program rollback reflects local jurisdictions struggles in addressing the lack of affordable housing supply and meeting Housing Element requirements while facing stark community opposition to high-density development.Continue Reading San Diego ADU Incentive Rollback Sheds Light on California Housing Woes
A Federal District Court in California has ruled that Proposition 65 warning requirements for dietary acrylamide are unconstitutional. The California Chamber of Commerce (“CalChamber”) sued five years ago challenging the statewide requirement under Proposition 65 for warning labels on foods containing acrylamide. (California Chamber of Commerce v. Bonta, No. 2:19-cv-02019-DJC-JDP.) This ruling is a major victory for CalChamber and the latest chapter in its long battle with the California Attorney General and private enforcer Council for Education and Research on Toxics (“CERT”) over whether a warning can be required by the State in light of the disputed science around acrylamide.Continue Reading Trial Court Strikes Down California’s Prop 65 Acrylamide Warning Requirements
Until this year, food companies—often the target of Proposition 65 enforcement actions—have been limited to specific “full-length” language for Prop 65 warnings, without explicit guidance regarding whether short-form warnings could be used as a safe harbor warning for food products and non-alcoholic beverages. Prior to the implementation of amended regulations this year, Prop 65 regulations required the following full-length warnings for food products containing a listed carcinogen or reproductive toxicant:Continue Reading Navigating the Legal Soup: A New “Short-Form” Recipe for Prop 65 Warnings on Food and Beverages
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service (collectively, Services) proposed last week to rescind the regulatory definition of “harm” under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA), sparking intense criticism from environmental advocacy groups. If finalized, the rescission would remove a longstanding protection for the habitat of wildlife species listed as threatened or endangered under the ESA, making regulatory compliance easier for many types of projects across the country. But it would also set up a potential collision between the current president’s deregulation efforts and one of several bills that California’s Legislature is considering as a way to compensate for potential “backsliding” of federal environmental protections, with the regulated community in California likely to be among the losers.Continue Reading Federal Proposal to Rescind ESA’s ‘Harm’ Definition Raises the Stakes for California’s AB 1319
Our previous post[1] covered the introduction of A.B. 303 (Addis), the “Battery Energy Safety and Accountability Act”, following a catastrophic fire at one of the world’s largest battery energy storage facilities located in Moss Landing, California, starting on January 16, 2025. As we explained, that bill, proposed as an urgency statute, would significantly curtail the authority of both local agencies and the California Energy Commission (CEC) to site new energy storage facilities and would likely result in significant adverse consequences for meeting California’s clean energy goals.Continue Reading California Leaders Move to Support Energy Storage
This report provides an overview of major federal environmental regulations and court decisions of 2024. Landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions with lasting consequences for environmental policy include Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024),1 which ended judicial deference to administrative agencies, and Corner Post v. Federal Reserve, 603 U.S. 799 (2024), which opened the doors of federal courts to many more plaintiffs challenging regulations. These decisions have subsequently bolstered efforts to limit or rollback regulatory actions, both by industry and by members of the Trump administration. The Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows Congress to rescind or invalidate new regulations, has also been used as the basis for invalidating many of the environmental regulations adopted since August 2024.Continue Reading Environmental YIR: 2024 Regulatory Legacies and Impacts