Gavin Newsom signs last-minute housing bill overhauling landmark environmental law
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Monday a bill overhauling the landmark California Environmental Quality Act, which he and housing advocates said will jump-start development and tackle the state’s perennial housing shortage.
The Legislature passed an updated state budget bill last Friday that, per an agreement drawn up by Newsom and the leaders of the state Senate and Assembly, stipulated that the governor had to sign Senate Bill 131 on Monday for the budget to be enacted ahead of the new fiscal year, which starts Tuesday.
SB 131 reforms CEQA, a law passed in the 1970s that investigates whether or not a proposed project would harm the environment. The law has been in the crosshairs of lawmakers and the governor over concerns it is too often used to hinder projects on grounds that have little to do with environmental concerns.
That put pressure on lawmakers in both houses to pass SB 131, despite robust opposition from many environmental groups and Republicans who objected to the poison pill provision. After signing it Monday evening, Newsom heralded it as a solution to the state’s affordability crisis, which reached a fever pitch last year and peaked when a series of wildfires devastated Los Angeles in January, burning thousands of homes.
“This was too urgent, too important, to allow the process to unfold as it has for the last generation,” he told reporters in a press conference flanked by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, California Housing Secretary Tomiquia Moss, state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, and members of the carpenters’ union.
Newsom waived some CEQA rules for wildfire victims in Los Angeles and Ventura counties who wanted to rebuild their homes, paving the way for California to revisit a law that critics often blame for exacerbating its housing shortage by delaying permitting processes and driving up production costs.
At the same time, Newsom said he would not support efforts to repeal CEQA entirely, and that SB 131 was targeted to stamp out abuses of environmental protections that are often used to block housing construction.
The legislation Newsom signed Monday evolved from an earlier proposal by Wiener, the former chair of the Senate Housing Committee.
California legislators debate ‘half-baked policy’
During a Monday meeting of the Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review, Wiener, who chairs the committee, answered many questions lawmakers had about the legislation and the projects it exempts.
The eleventh-hour discussion didn’t sit well with some members of the committee.
“The questions that have happened are the reason we try to do these bills in the policy committee so that we can have the discussion and make amendments and not have a binary choice of whether to go up or down on a policy bill,” said state Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz.
Laird said he’d voted against an earlier iteration of the bill.
Dozens of environmental groups came forward to provide public comment against the measure, and sent statement opposing its passage, like the Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity and California Environmental Justice Alliance.
“This half-baked policy written behind closed doors will have destructive consequences for environmental justice communities and endangered species across California,” said Sierra Club California Senior Policy Strategist Jakob Evans. “It is extremely disappointing that California’s leadership is taking notes from the Federal Administration by ramming through this deregulation via the budget process.”
State Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, D-West Sacramento, said he understood why the three parties of the Senate, Assembly and governor were pushing the CEQA reform within a budget trailer bill.
“I wish this could be a policy bill, but I’m not sure that would work,” he said, citing previous attempts to reform CEQA that were bogged down by additional demands of developers.
Still, the bipartisan group of legislators said it was important to thread the needle to preserve the rights of tribes and communities of color to stand up for their health and the environment.
“CEQA is not the enemy,” said Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, D-Los Angeles. “Streamlining can’t mean that we’re abandoning CEQA because so many communities rely on it.”
This story was originally published June 30, 2025 at 7:46 PM.
