California Supreme Court lets voters be heard

Yesterday the California Supreme Court granted review of Tuolumne Jobs & Small Business Alliance v. Superior Court (Wal-Mart Stores). This is an excellent development, which PLF has supported. Readers will recall that Tuolumne Jobs held that a city council has to complete an EIR under CEQA in order to adopt an ordinance that is presented to it by the voters of the city through the initiative process. Anyone in the least familiar with CEQA will realize that this is an impossibility, which the court in Tuolumne Jobs actually admitted. In so doing, it directly conflicted with another case, Native American Sacred Site, which holds exactly the opposite. With the Supreme Court granting review, proponents of local initiatives in California will now have a clear rule of law that governs how their initiative proposals are handled. We are hopeful that the California Supreme Court will beat back the judicial effort in Tuolumne Jobs to expand the reach of CEQA