South Fresno Community Alliance v. City of Fresno

In an appeal of the dismissal of a challenge to the City of Fresno’s 2021 amendment to its general plan and the completion of a Program Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to implement the plan, the California Court of Appeal found several failures to comply with CEQA and ordered that the City be required to revise the PEIR. The prejudicial errors identified by the appellate court included the City’s inappropriate assumption that statewide greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets were appropriate for Fresno. The appellate court said the City should have substantiated this assumption. The appellate court also found that the PEIR did not assure that greenhouse gas mitigation measures would be effective in reducing emissions so as not to have a significant impact and found that the City’s greenhouse gas reduction plan “clearly does not establish a mechanism to monitor progress.” The appellate court rejected an argument that the PEIR should have analyzed the general plan’s emissions over the plan’s lifetime; the court found that the PEIR appropriate considered an interim 2035 target. The court also rejected a challenge to the PEIR’s “population-based” metric for projecting growth.