Written over 50 years ago, California Democrats just don’t seem to understand how powerful and far-reaching their environmental laws truly are.
This week, the University of California, Berkeley, was forced to announce it was cutting its incoming freshman class by one-third after a
California
appeals court denied an appeal to an August 2021 Alameda County Superior Court ruling that ordered the university to freeze enrollment.
“This court-mandated decrease in enrollment would be a tragic outcome for thousands of students who have worked incredibly hard to gain admission to Berkeley,” the university said in a statement. “If left intact, the court’s unprecedented decision would have a devastating impact on prospective students, university admissions, campus operations, and UC Berkeley’s ability to serve California students by meeting the enrollment targets set by the state of California.”
A court ordering a university to cap enrollment is indeed unprecedented, but the result is far from surprising for anyone familiar with the California Environmental Quality Act. First passed in 1970, the CEQA empowers any Californian to go to state court and stop any government action — unless the government agency in question can prove they considered all the relevant environmental consequences of their actions.
In this case, a group called Save Berkeley Neighborhoods alleged that the university failed to complete an environmental impact report, as required by the CEQA, when it decided to increase enrollment by 3,050 for the 2021-2022 academic year. Despite the fact that over 120,000 people already live in Berkeley and another 7.5 million live in the surrounding Bay Area, the court agreed that the university had, in actuality, failed to produce the proper EIR as required by the CEQA.
Now California Democrats, who recently lowered University of California admissions policies by getting rid of the SAT and the ACT so they could increase minority enrollment, are scrambling to find ways around the very environmental laws they created.
One idea is to spend $2 billion on new student housing, but it’s not clear how far $2 billion will go in a state that recently blew $1 billion building just 1,000 homes for the homeless.
Another idea is to amend the CEQA to create an exception for
higher education.
But that would create a pretty big slippery slope for California environmentalists. If universities are exempt from CEQA, why not hospitals? Or homeless shelters? Or solar farms?
Either way, California Democrats are now busy tearing themselves apart over their internal contradictions, and we plan to pop some popcorn and enjoy the show.
