The California Supreme Court has delivered a rare legal rebuke to the powerful California Coastal Commission, ruling the commission can’t use a strict interpretation of language in state law to claim the legal authority to simply override local communities’ development decisions.
On April 23, the state high court sided with a company seeking to build new single family homes in the Central Coast community of Los Osos, saying lower courts were wrong to conclude the Coastal Commission held the power to “appeal” review of the company’s development plans “to itself” and reject the permits San Luis Obispo County officials had already awarded.
In its unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court rebuked the Coastal Commission for wrongly interpreting state law by asserting it can deny the Los Osos project, because San Luis Obispo County did not identify single family homes as the sole “principal permitted use” in a “sensitive coastal resource area” covered by a legally binding development plan, known as a “local coastal program” (LCP).
The high court said state law doesn’t limit counties and other local governments to just one “principal permitted use.” And that, the Supreme Court said, serves to limit the ability of the Commission to insert itself into development decisions in communities and counties along California’s Pacific coast.
The decision was authored by California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero.
The case had landed in court in 2020, when the Los Osos-based Shear Development Company challenged the Commission in state court.
According to court documents and other published reports, Shear had sought since 2003 to build single family homes on eight residential lots in the unincorporated community of Los Osos, near the south end of Morro Bay.
In 2017, Shear obtained what it believed to be the required permits from San Luis Obispo County.
However, the Coastal Commission then moved to block those permits. The decision to intervene was unilateral. Court documents describe the Commission’s action as “appealing” review of the matter “to itself.”
The Commission is an entity created under California state law in the early 1970s, ostensibly to guide development along the coast to protect “the overall quality” of California’s coast, with an eye toward ensuring “public access,” balanced against “sound resources conservation principles and constitutionally protected rights of private property owners.”
However, critics have asserted the Commission has used its mandate to vastly expand its powers through the ensuing decades, and in many ways serving to stifle development along the coast and interfere with property owners’ rights, or even to push politically-motivated policies.
And that amassing of power, critics say, has gone largely unchecked by the courts.
In the Los Osos case, after the Commission intervened, Shear filed suit in San Luis Obispo County Superior Court, saying the Commission had overstepped its bounds and lacked the authority to act as it did.
The dispute centered largely on how to interpret a provision in state law governing the so-called LCP. Under that provision, the Commission is granted the authority to intervene in reviewing development proposals which are not listed in a community’s LCP as the “principal permitted use.”
In the Los Osos case, the Commission asserted it could intervene because the single family homes sought by Shear and permitted by the county were just one of three “principal permitted uses” identified by San Luis Obispo County in its LCP.
Since there was no singular principal permitted use, the Commission argued, it held the authority to review any development decisions in the county.
In response, the county and Shear argued that if courts sided with the Commission on that question, it would produce an “absurd” result in which the Commission essentially assumes control of all development decisions in that county or any other with more than one “principal permitted use” listed in its LCP.
Lower courts, however, sided with the Commission, saying they believed they should give deference to the Commission’s interpretation of the law.
At the Supreme Court, however, the justices said that the law requires no such deference.
The justices noted that, under California’s constitution and the law, the Coastal Commission shares the task of regulating development along California’s coasts with counties and other local governments.
And while the Commission may review local governments’ building permit decisions on appeal, that power is not unlimited.
The high court described the lower court’s holdings and the Commission’s strict interpretation of the “principal permitted use” phrase as “strained.”
They said the use of the word “the” and singular language does not mean Coastal Commission review is triggered any time a county or other local government includes more than one “principal permitted use” within an area covered by an LCP.
“… The County’s LCP designates three specific things as principal permitted uses for the proposed development site, and referring to ‘the’ principal permitted use invokes those three specific things,” the justices wrote. “We need not strain to read the text as only singular because the word ‘the’ particularizes; ‘the’ can particularize to three specific things just as well as to one.
“The plain text suggests that the Commission’s appellate jurisdiction is limited to developments that are not designated as any of the principal permitted uses.”
The ruling was hailed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit constitutional legal advocacy group that represented Shear Development in the matter.
In a statement following the ruling, Jeremy Talcott, an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, said: “Today’s decision is a win for every property owner along California’s coast. The Coastal Commission cannot simply decide to reinterpret legislation based on its own whims. Its authority has limits, and today the court enforced them unanimously.
“For years, the Commission has usurped the power given by the state legislature to local coastal communities to approve homebuilding permits. This decision corrects the Commission’s overreach.”
