California state lawmakers did not violate the state constitution by enacting a law that overrides local voter initiatives and gives local city and county governments the power to approve higher-density residential developments, on a case-by-case basis, in the name of increasing the supply of affordable housing in the Golden State, a California appeals court has ruled.
On March 28, a three-justice panel of the California Second District Appellate Court upheld as constitutional the law known as Senate Bill 10. The decision rejected the contentions of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and the city of Redondo Beach that the state law trampled the power of voters through the initiative process, established in the state constitution, to set their own local ordinances governing housing standards in their communities.
Approved in 2021, Senate Bill 10 grants counties and cities limited ability to supersede local housing density caps, on "a parcel-by-parcel basis," whether those caps were set by local ordinance or through voter initiatives.
SB10 allows city and county boards to approve residential developments that are more dense than would otherwise be allowed by simple majority, if the density caps were put in place by local ordinance. If the caps were established by voter initiative, SB10 would require a two-thirds supermajority to approve a project denser than ordinarily allowed.
The law was immediately challenged in court. According to the appellate decision, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation led the challenge primarily to defend against a perceived assault by lawmakers upon the local voter initiative powers set by the state constitution. Redondo Beach later joined the action specifically to defend the powers of local governments to set and follow density caps.
In the decision, the appellate panel upheld the decision of a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, finding the law was not "constitutionally problematic."
Specifically, the appellate judges said lawmakers crafted a "narrowly tailored mechanism of cloaking counties and cities in the mantle of state preemptive authority so that they may decide whether to supersede a local density cap on a parcel-by-parcel basis - rather than effective a wholesale invalidation of all local density capts in every county and city."
The appellate panel further said SB10 is an expression of the will of the state, as a whole, to address the state's well-documented lack of affordable housing, which the judges say is a "matter of statewide concern."
They said the measure strikes a constitutional balance between the power of local voters and cities and counties to govern their own communities, and the power of the state to address widespread issues, harming communities throughout California.
"Senate Bill 10 ... expands the range of possible substantive decisions that a local jurisdiction can make by granting local legislative bodies the discretion to supersede some local density caps, and does so in light of the pressing and severe shortage of housing in California," the justices wrote.
"Treating previously made substantive decisions enacted through voter initiative as forever binding would frustrate Senate Bill 10’s purpose because the local jurisdiction should be given the opportunity to reevaluate that prior decision in light of the housing crisis..."
The decision was authored by Justice Brian M. Hoffstadt, with concurrence by Justices Elwood Lui and Victoria M Chavez.