California lawmakers approved changes this week to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), first passed in 1970 by then-California Governor Ronald Reagan, through a budget bill. This will have significant impact on land use planning: Now, nine different project types are exempt in California from environmental reviews.
The bill, signed into law by California Governor Gavin Newsom on June 30, had bipartisan support: the California State Assembly approved it with a 50 to 3 vote, and in the State Senate, 33 to 1. Scientists, trade unions, and activists have argued, however, rolling back the CEQA will exacerbate global warming and inequality.
The project types now exempt in California from environmental reviews are: Child care centers, health clinics, food banks, farmworker housing, broadband, wildfire prevention, water infrastructure, public parks or trails, and advanced manufacturing.
The Newsom administration argued the CEQA, since its passage, has hamstrung state officials trying to solve the affordability and homelessness crisis. United Auto Workers in the Western United States, and other groups have vocally spoken against the rollbacks, citing concerns over toxic work sites.
“The recent actions by the Governor and Legislature highlight the complexity of reforming California’s environmental review process,” 2025 AIA California President Carina Mills told AN. “As architects, we value CEQA’s original intent to protect the environment and public health. Yet we also recognize it has at times been used to delay critical projects that support climate goals, housing affordability, and community resilience.”
“AIA California believes thoughtful, balanced CEQA reform is both necessary and achievable,” Mills continued. “As reforms move forward, we urge a careful, inclusive approach that upholds environmental stewardship, advances equity, and supports the design of communities Californians need.”
Goods and Bads
CalMatters pointed out that, thanks to this new budget bill, high-tech manufacturing plants can now be built in industrial zones with no environmental oversight. This will adversely impact low-income communities of color, said Asha Sharma, Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability state policy manager.
Governor Newsom floated revising the CEQA after wildfires subsumed southern California last winter—his thinking is in line with Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson, and others. In Abundance, for instance, Klein and Thompson argue that liberals can bolster their electability, which is at historic lows, by rethinking housing, labor, and climate regulations.
Sam Bloch, an environmental journalist, and the author of Shade, sees positives and negatives in this week’s events. “There’s an obvious need for more housing in California, and it’s clear that the environmental reviews required by CEQA can be wielded to slow down production and thwart badly needed developments,” Bloch told AN. “So for that reason, I am excited by this news.”
“Somewhere along the way,” Bloch noted, “the environmental resources that CEQA was supposed to be protecting grew to include the sun, and that shows up in the environmental review standards of local governments.”
Bloch, who has written extensively about shade as a human and environmental right, said the new bill “chips away at one aspect of environmental review” that he considers “backwards and outdated, which are ‘shadow impacts.’”
In 2018, San Francisco officials cited CEQA to help block a housing project because it created shadows over a Mission District playground, to name but one example. “In Los Angeles,” Bloch added, “projects that can cast shadows on surrounding parks, playgrounds, backyards, or footpaths can be sent back to the drawing board or mitigated by payments to the rest of the neighborhood.”
“Shadows are treated as bad things that ‘degrade’ neighborhoods,” Bloch continued, “but as I argue, shadows aren’t always a bad thing, and in fact in warming California cities, their shade actually makes outdoor spaces more livable and people feel cooler.”
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