By Braeden Mansouri
The white fritillary, a flower not found in southern California, plays a major role in Season 3 of the HBO drama ®Euphoria, where its status as an endangered plant very much endangers an Los Angeles County seaside senior living project being developed by the character portrayed by Jacob Elordi. The flower’s presence on the project site causes the (ambiguous) planning and zoning commission to halt construction, pending the requisite environmental studies and mitigation.
Notwithstanding the plot’s backwards land use and environmental review timeline, the impact that the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) can have on development projects has entered the pop culture consciousness. CEQA’s notoriety may be short lived, however.
In April 2026, the proponents of the “Building an Affordable California Act” submitted over 945,000 signatures (nearly twice the 546,651 required) to place on the November ballot the most far-reaching reforms to the CEQA in the environmental statute’s 56-year history. Sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce and other business and utility organizations, the measure proposes to simplify the environmental review process for certain “essential projects” and to streamline legal challenges to such projects.
The Current CEQA Regime
Signed into law by Governor Ronald Reagan in 1970, CEQA was drafted to apply to “public” projects, requiring the government to conduct an environmental study to examine a project’s impacts. Subsequent judicial decisions interpreted “public” to mean any project that requires governmental approval. The California Legislature subsequently amended CEQA to apply only projects that require discretionary approval (i.e. those projects that the local agency retains the discretion to revise the project to mitigate for potential environmental impacts). The Legislature also tasked the Natural Resources Agency to devise several categories of projects that are exempt from CEQA review (i.e. the categorical exemptions).
CEQA’s notoriously low threshold for challenging a development project has allowed almost anyone to file a lawsuit against a project. The consequence of this, resulting in a CEQA-industrial complex of sorts, whereby law firms, special interest groups, and other consultants file environmental challenges against projects, seeking special benefits from developers (e.g. inclusion of public facilities for neighbor uses, or project labor agreements to satisfy labor union demands). Not only does each change to a project increase overall costs, but the time spent negotiating or defending a CEQA challenge extends the overall project timeline, in addition to increases in attorney and consultant fees. Consequently, reforming CEQA to eliminate avenues for abuse has become a major goal of housing and public transit advocates.
The Building an Affordable California Act
The proposed statute would make significant changes to CEQA, applying to the environmental law many of the same strategies that recent state housing laws apply to streamlining of housing projects. Broadly speaking, the proposal will establish timelines and limitations for challenges to qualifying projects.
The proposal creates a new class of “essential” projects, which are defined to include: essential housing, water, clean energy, public health, public safety, broadband Internet access, education facility, or transportation. Essential project is defined to include “all related and ancillary public, private, and utility infrastructure and public service facilities required by a utility or public agency or included in an essential project application as part of the “whole of the project.”
The definitions section additionally includes discrete definitions for each specific class of essential project. For example, an “essential housing project” is defined to include a project that includes only residential units, mixed-use development (as that term is defined), transitional housing, supportive housing, emergency shelters, farmworker housing, group living accommodations, student housing units, and senior housing units.
An Initial Application
Similar to project applications under Senate Bill 330 (2019) this measure would allow a project applicant to file an “initial application,” which allows the lead agency to make a determination of application completeness. The lead agency must make its completeness determination within 30 days. Within 30 days of determining the application to be complete, the lead agency must decide whether the project requires an Environmental Impact Report (EIR), a Negative Declaration (ND) or Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND), or any other environmental review documentation (e.g. CEQA exemption, EIR addendum, etc.). The lead agency must certify an EIR within one year of determining the application complete, approve an ND or MND within 180 days of application completeness, or otherwise make a final CEQA determination for any other CEQA document within 90 days of determining the application complete.
If approved, the law would provide timelines for challenging a lead agency’s failure to approve a project consistent with the law, but also provide strict timelines for circulating documents for public comment. An applicant may also request a preliminary scoping process and streamlined alternatives analysis, provided the applicant has notified the lead agency of its intention to proceed with this process.
Judicial Review Process
Probably most consequential is the measure’s reform of the judicial review process under CEQA. The ballot measure will limit a petitioner’s claims to whether the public agency complied with “objective existing laws” and whether the project’s approval complies with those laws. The measure would require that a judicial action be complete (including any appellate proceedings) within 270 days, requiring application of the judicial streamlining procedures applicable to environmental leadership development projects. A court, in its own discretion, may extend the deadline by up to 90 additional days. If the court finds that the approval of the project does not comply with applicable law, the remedy will be limited only to prohibiting commencement of the noncompliant part of the project. The remaining compliant portion of the project can continue. Upon completion of corrective action, the court will dismiss the action and the project will not be subject to further challenge. A court may only order a halt to a project if the project will have a specific, adverse impact upon public safety with no feasible method for mitigating or avoiding that impact.
Providing for More Expeditious or Advantageous Review
The act allows an applicant to elect use of none, some, or all of the new law, and to use any other state statute that would “provide for more expeditious or advantageous review and approval.” A prevailing wage requirement applies only to housing projects over 85 feet in height—generally these taller projects are more complicated, for which the skilled labor requirements can sometimes be a beneficial consideration. However, all other essential projects (i.e. essential projects that are not housing projects) must comply with the labor requirements contained in Section 21183.5 (from the Jobs and Economic Improvement Through Environmental Leadership Act of 2021).
Tribal Consultation
The act would still require tribal consultation to occur as is required currently under CEQA. However, the lead agency must conduct an initial screening to identify and evaluate tribal cultural resources, upon the earlier of the submittal of a preliminary application, the applicant’s written notice to invoke the act, or the application for the essential project. This allows the applicant to participate in early discussions, through a meet and confer process with the tribe, as applicable.
Conclusion and Implications
The Secretary of State’s office still needs to confirm the validity of signatures, but given the overwhelming volume in signatures submitted with the petition, the measure will likely appear on the November ballot. Language protecting tribal consultation and imposing prevailing wage and labor standards on most essential projects appear to be attempts by the Chamber of Commerce at forestalling any funded opposition by some of the state’s major special interest groups: labor unions and the native tribes. The measure’s streamlined CEQA provisions would only preclude union lawsuits against non-housing projects that comply with labor standards. Thus, the measure would not offer much protection to non-housing essential projects that do not comply with the required labor provisions. The measure could, however, streamline the production of mid-size housing developments under 85 feet in height.
If approved by the voters, the Building an Affordable California Act would provide the most comprehensive reform to CEQA, building on the momentum achieved by the Legislature’s adoption of AB 130 in 2025. Still, the ballot measure plays into CEQA’s deficiencies, by mostly allowing the reform measures but only after a project largely meets certain (and often costly) requirements. Nevertheless, the measure could put a stop to frivolous lawsuits by “concerned” NIMBYs seeking to block new housing in the neighborhood. While Euphoria’s Season 3 wrapped up this May, the next chapter of this CEQA drama unfolds this November. For more information on the proposed act, see:https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/initiatives/pdfs/25-0023A1%20%28%26quot%3BEssential%20Projects%26quot%3B%29.pdf
