The California Supreme Court has been asked to review a lower court ruling that held the University of California at Berkeley failed to adequately account for the overall impact of adding 3,000 additional students for the 2022-23 school year.
The university on Feb. 14 asked the state’s highest court to weigh in on the lawsuit, which was filed by Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, and argues that the enrollment expansion plans don’t comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
The expansive CEQA statute has provided well-resourced neighbors with the ability to handcuff the greatest public university in the world, preventing them from offering educational opportunities to thousands of kids, Matt Regan, senior vice president of public policy with the Bay Area Council (BAC), told the Northern California Record.
“The University has been expanding and seeks to continue to expand its enrollment, and in order to do that, obviously, you need to, among other things, build more student housing,” Regan said.
The petition for review states UC Berkley has already made its first admissions offers for the 2022-23 school year, and if the lower court’s ruling – freezing admission at 2020-21 reduced pandemic levels – is to stand it will deny admission offers to other deserving students. Those offers are scheduled to be issued on March 24.
The high court is expected to issue a decision in Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods v. the Regents of the University of California, et al. as soon as this week.
The BAC has filed an amicus brief in support of the university, which notes it has sponsored legislation to enable housing to be built here faster and at less cost -- SB 1227, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed in 2018. “SB 1227 makes it easier for developers to build student housing and has helped provide secure, permanent housing for some of the estimated 800,000 students in California who are either homeless or housing insecure,” the brief states.
In terms of the bigger picture, it’s hoped the court will also consider how the CEQA mandates that led to the lawsuit raise questions on the filing of CEQA litigation and how it impacts development not just in Berkeley but across California.
Regan noted that research by the Holland & Knight law firm has shown the majority of CEQA lawsuits aren’t filed by environmental organizations.
“People can use and abuse it for their own selfish, narrow purposes,” Regan said. “The problem is there are too many people in California who view CEQA as kind of Biblical in that you cannot amend it, you cannot open it up, you cannot change it; it’s carved in stone tablets. And it has been politically very, very challenging for the Legislature to do anything meaningful in CEQA reform.”
Tens if not hundreds of thousands of potential manufacturing and construction jobs have been lost to California, because CEQA makes it almost impossible to do any kind of industry here, Regan said.
“Hopefully, people will start to realize that this law is doing more harm to California than good,” Regan said.
CEQA delays have also plagued ongoing plans for a new stadium for the Oakland Athletics.