AB 81 x3: CEQA end-run: out of bounds and overtime

The California Environmental Quality Act is not only the state’s bedrock environmental protection law, requiring that significant environmental impacts of development projects be mitigated. Equally important, it guarantees that citizens have a right to examine the project and its environmental impacts and to challenge the decisions of the government if they believe the impacts have not been properly analyzed or mitigated. Both of these principles were ignored when the legislature passed and the governor signed AB 81 x3, which granted a CEQA exemption to a proposed 75,000-seat football stadium in Los Angeles, which was being legally challenged by citizens under CEQA.