Ninth Circuit sides with California in housing mandate fight with Huntington Beach

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A Ninth Circuit panel on Wednesday sided with the state of California in its legal battle with the city of Huntington Beach over laws that force it to build more housing.

Last year, a federal judge found that the city and its officials lacked standing to bring the complaint. A Ninth Circuit three-judge panel agreed, citing previous case law that “forbids political subdivisions and their officials from challenging the constitutionality of state statutes in federal court.”

“Today, yet another court has slapped down Huntington Beach’s cynical attempt to prevent the state from enforcing our housing laws," said California Governor Gavin Newsom in a written statement. “Huntington Beach officials’ continued efforts to advance plainly unlawful NIMBY policies are failing their own citizens — by wasting time and taxpayer dollars that could be used to create much-needed housing.”

Huntington Beach had argued that its status as a charter city means that it isn’t a “political subdivision,” but the panel remained unmoved, writing in its terse, four-page ruling, “No matter how California categorizes charter cities, they remain subordinate political bodies, not sovereign entities."

In a phone interview, Huntington Beach City Attorney Michael Gates said that based on the hearing for the appeal, he wasn’t surprised at the ruling, though he was surprised at its brevity. He called the decision “a misapprehension or misapplication of the law,” which he said was a basis for en banc review, which the city will ask for. If that fails, he said, the city will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.

“Council members have made it very clear, we’re going the distance on this,” Gates said.

In an effort to ease its stubborn housing crisis, California has passed a slew of laws to incentivize construction and to require cities to change their zoning rules so more homes can be built. A number of cities have fought those new laws, including Huntington Beach — or “surf city,” as it is fond of calling itself, either by suing the state or by simply ignoring the new rules and waiting for the state sue. Newson has called Huntington Beach “Exhibit A of what NIMBYism looks like,” referring to the phrase “Not in My Backyard,” a derisive term for people and groups who fight new development.

In March 2023, California sued Huntington Beach over its refusal to legalize accessory dwelling units — sometimes called ADUs or granny flats — on properties zoned for single-family homes, claiming that city officials had showed a “willful intentional refusal to follow laws.” A day later, Huntington Beach countersued California over a number of housing laws, which it called “an unbridled power play to control all aspects of the City Council’s land use decisions in order to eliminate the suburban character of the city and replace it with a high-density mecca.”

The city added in its complaint: “This will be done through the forced rezoning for high-density housing, including allowing developers to construct high-density projects leaving the City Council with no discretion to deny or condition invasive high-density development.”

Among the laws being sued over was the housing element, a blueprint that every city must put together for how it plans to foster construction of a certain amount of housing units. Huntington Beach must produce a housing element that allows for 13,000 additional units. In May, a Superior Court Judge in San Diego ruled that Huntington Beach was flouting the housing element law.

“While the city has been wasting the public’s time and money pursuing this meritless lawsuit," said California Attorney General Rob Bonta in a written statement on Wednesday, “its neighboring communities — along with every Californian struggling to keep a roof over their heads or wondering where they’re going to sleep tonight — need Huntington Beach to step up and adopt a housing plan without further delay.”

Gates said the Ninth Circuit’s ruling would have “disastrous effects.”

“The state is basically commandeering local decision making,” he said.

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