AIDS Healthcare Foundation v. City of Los Angeles

The California Court of Appeal rejected challenges to the revised environmental impact report (REIR) for a mixed-use development project in downtown Los Angeles. A trial court identified deficiencies in the original EIR and ordered the City of Los Angeles to fix them. In its review of the challenge to the REIR, the appellate court concluded that the doctrine of res judicata barred three claims regarding the consideration of greenhouse gas emissions in the REIR. The petitioner made two of the claims (a claim that the project’s consistency with Assembly Bill 32’s emission reduction goals was an outdated comparison and a claim related to a 2018 executive order setting a target of carbon neutrality by 2045) in its challenge to the original EIR, and could have but did not make the third claim, which concerned greenhouse gas significance thresholds. The appellate court also rejected a challenge to the methodology used in the REIR to determine the significance of the project’s greenhouse gas emissions and contentions that the REIR did not demonstrate consistency with the California Air Resources Board 2017 Scoping Plan or the LA Green New Deal. The court also rejected a facial challenge to the City’s adoption of the California Environmental Quality Act’s (CEQA’s) statewide Appendix G environmental questions checklist as the City’s CEQA thresholds.