Newsom Signs CEQA Reform Bills Aimed at Greenlighting More Development
The bills passed with strong support in both the California State Assembly and Senate as part of the state budget process
By Nick Trombola July 1, 2025 1:00 pm
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California will usher in major reforms to its controversial environmental protection law following a pair of bill signings by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Newsom on Monday signed AB 130 and SB 131, a pair of bills aimed at updating the California Environmental Protection Act (CEQA), as part of the state’s 2025-2026 budget. The bills draw upon two other pro-development proposals — SB 607 and AB 609 — previously proposed by State Sen. Scott Wiener and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, respectively.
The newly signed bills together create 10 new exemptions to CEQA, which is simultaneously championed and reviled in the Golden State as a bulwark against development. The State Assembly unanimously passed AB 130, and the Senate passed it 28-5, while SB 131 passed in the Assembly 50-3 and the Senate 33-1.
“If we can’t address this issue, we’re going to lose trust, and that’s just the truth,” Newsom said during a Monday news conference. “And so this is so much bigger in many ways than the issue itself. It is about the reputation of not just Sacramento and the legislative leadership and executive leadership, but the reputation of the state of California.”
AB 130 creates an exemption for environmentally friendly, infill housing projects, as long as they abide by local zoning, density and objective planning standards and aren’t located on environmentally sensitive or hazardous ground. The Senate bill, meanwhile, creates similar exemptions for health centers and rural clinics; child care centers; advanced manufacturing facilities; food banks; farm worker housing; clean water projects (except the Delta Conveyance); wildfire risk mitigation projects; broadband; and parks.
The bill’s sponsors say that AB 130 in particular aims to speed up development of housing in designated areas, reduce costs, and ultimately improve environmental protection by guiding construction away from less developed areas.
“These new CEQA reforms are a bold step forward toward tackling the root causes of California’s affordability crisis,” Wiener said in a statement. “The high costs devastating our communities stem directly from our extreme shortage of housing, child care, affordable health care, and so many of the other things families need to thrive. These bills get red tape and major process hurdles out of the way, allowing us to finally start addressing these shortages and securing an affordable California and a brighter future.”
SB 131 also makes several procedural changes to CEQA, which lawmakers hope will narrow loopholes in the law that allow opponents of projects to hamstring development approval. That includes raising the relevancy standard for administrative records that can be used in CEQA lawsuits, a provision aimed at reducing the length of CEQA litigation; streamlining environmental reviews for housing projects that “narrowly” miss an exemption; and removing other “duplicative” law requirements.
“AB 130 and SB 131 ensures that the state’s environmental review process works better — not just for housing, but for climate action and equity,” Corey Smith, Housing Action Coalition executive director, said in a statement. “California’s current CEQA framework is too often misused to block exactly the kinds of infill, affordable, and sustainable housing our communities desperately need.”
Not everyone is thrilled about the reforms, however. Environmental groups and labor unions have for decades supported CEQA, originally passed in 1972, as a means to both protect sensitive California landscapes and communities, and as a tool to leverage better working conditions in development projects.
“The bill’s language was negotiated behind closed doors and only made public on Friday, and added giveaways for sprawl, stomach-churning exemptions for heavy industrial ‘advanced manufacturing’ projects, and more,” the Planning and Conservation League wrote in a call to action for its supporters last week. “There was none of the transparency and public review allowed by the normal legislative process.”
Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.
