Planning and zoning: community plans: review under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Senator Richardson's proposal to streamline California's community planning process aims to protect development projects from certain legal challenges under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The legislation reestablishes and expands previous provisions that limited courts' ability to invalidate development approvals when community plan updates face CEQA-related litigation.

The bill defines qualifying community plans as those adopted for specific geographic areas that include multiple transit priority areas and have not been updated in over 10 years. To be eligible, local jurisdictions must have current mobility elements, adequate housing capacity for regional needs, and adopted vehicle miles traveled thresholds. The measure applies to community plan updates adopted after January 1, 2025, and development applications filed through January 1, 2036.

Under the new provisions, courts cannot void or set aside development approvals based on CEQA non-compliance with a community plan update if the project was approved before any court stay or if the application was deemed complete prior to court intervention. The bill maintains existing CEQA compliance requirements for individual development projects and preserves other legal grounds for challenging project approvals. As an urgency measure responding to housing needs, these provisions would apply immediately upon enactment to all California cities, including charter cities.