California Environmental Quality Act

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA /ˈsiː.kwə/) is a California statute passed in 1970 and signed in to law by then-governor Ronald Reagan, shortly after the United States federal government passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), to institute a statewide policy of environmental protection. CEQA does not directly regulate land uses, but instead requires state and local agencies within California to follow a protocol of analysis and public disclosure of environmental impacts of proposed projects and, in a departure from NEPA, adopt all feasible measures to mitigate those impacts. CEQA makes environmental protection a mandatory part of every California state and local (public) agency's decision making process.

In 1972, the California Supreme Court broadened CEQA by interpreting a "public" project as any development that needed government approval. Since then, CEQA has become the basis for anyone with a grievance against a project to file lawsuits to slow projects by years or kill projects by imposing delays and litigation costs that make projects infeasible.

CEQA has contributed to the California housing shortage. It has been criticized for being abused (used for reasons other than environmental ones) to block, downsize, delay, or gain other concessions from new development. CEQA has even been used to block or delay projects that have positive environmental impacts, such as solar plants, wind turbines, bike lanes on pre-existing roads, and denser housing. One study found that 85% of CEQA lawsuits were filed by organizations with no record of environmental advocacy and 80% of CEQA lawsuits targeted infill development. CEQA has also been used by NIMBYs to block homeless shelters, student housing and affordable housing projects, by businesses to try to block competition, and by unions to force developers to use union workers.

All governors since 1983 (George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson, Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jerry Brown), as well as current governor Gavin Newsom, have stated that CEQA needs to be reformed. In 2025, the state legislature passed two bills, with bipartisan support, that exempted from CEQA environmental review various types of developments, including housing in dense areas.

CEQA was signed into law in 1970 by governor Ronald Reagan, in a time of increasing public concern for the environment, caused by events such as the 1969 Cuyahoga River Fire. The statute required that for any "public" project, the government must conduct an environmental study to examine what impacts the project might have on things like air/water quality, noise, or nature, and then generate an EIR (Environmental Impact Report) documenting all these impacts as well as potential and planned mitigations. Fifteen other states followed California, generally modelling their laws after California's law.

However, in a departure from other states, in 1972 state courts interpreted a "public" project as any development that needed government approval. As of 2021, this application of the law is unique to California.

By 2021, the CEQA guidelines, which explain how CEQA reviews must be handled, had grown from an initial 10 page checklist to over 500 pages, including issues such as aesthetics.

NEPA, a United States federal statute passed the year before CEQA, is similar to CEQA in that both statutes set forth a policy of environmental protection, and a protocol by which all agencies in their respective jurisdictions make environmental protection part of their decision making process.