The California Supreme Court further clarified the fundamental question of what constitutes a “project” under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in its August 19. 2019, decision in Union of Medical Marijuana Patients, Inc. v. City of San Diego, finding that a San Diego ordinance restricting the location of medical marijuana facilities constituted a “project” for purposes of CEQA. At issue in the case was whether an alleged increase in traffic and air pollution caused by marijuana drivers being required to drive farther as a result of the ordinance qualified as a “project” under CEQA so as to necessitate environmental review.

The Court held that whether an activity is a “project” subject to environmental review is dependent on whether the activity in question would result in environmental impacts, not the type of approval involved. CEQA requires state and local agencies to identify the significant environmental impacts of their actions and to avoid or mitigate those impacts, if feasible. Specifically, the Court ruled that while zone changes are not per se “projects” under CEQA, the City of San Diego’s zoning ordinance, which restricted medical marijuana dispensaries to specific areas of the city, qualified as a CEQA “project” due to the ordinance’s potential to cause reasonably foreseeable indirect environmental impacts.

The city argued that the adoption of the ordinance did not have the potential for resulting in either a direct physical change or a reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change in the environment and that future projects subject to the ordinance would require a discretionary permit and analysis under CEQA. Unlike the trial and appellate courts, however, the State’s high court disagreed, remanding the case back to the trial court and requiring that the city conduct further environmental review of the ordinance as required by CEQA. sdlocked0 Lis

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