On June 30, 2016, California's First Appellate District Court of Appeal rejected a challenge to a regional plan ("Plan") to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ("GHG") adopted by the Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Government (collectively, "Agencies"), and approved by the California Air Resources Board ("CARB"). Bay Area Citizens v. Association of Bay Area Governments, et al., No. A143058. Bay Area Citizens ("Citizens") filed a petition for writ of mandate in August 2013 in the Alameda County Superior Court to challenge the Plan and appealed after the Superior Court denied the petition.
 
The Agencies created the Plan in response to legislation enacted in California in 2008, known as the "Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008" ("Act"). The Act empowers CARB to set targets for each of California's regional planning agencies to reduce GHG from automobiles and light trucks in its region. In 2010, CARB issued its GHG reductions targets for the Bay Area region, which specifically required the Agencies to develop regional land use and transportation strategies that would result in per capita percentage reductions in emission of seven percent by 2020 and 15 percent by 2035, as compared to emissions in 2005. The Agencies complied, and the Plan was approved by CARB in April 2014.
 
Citizens argued that, under the Plan, the Agencies imposed unnecessary land use restrictions on the Bay Area to meet 2020 and 2035 emissions reductions targets. Specifically, Citizens argued that the Agencies ignored GHG reductions expected from preexisting statewide mandates, making the Plan unnecessary. Citizens' main concern was that the Agencies planned to meet CARB's targets "primarily through reduction in the vehicle miles traveled of passenger motorcars and light trucks" resulting from "high-density land-use patterns" and "construction and extension of light and heavy rail." The Plan required "78 [percent] of new housing and 62 [percent] of new jobs, through 2040, to be located within priority development areas," i.e., "'[l]ocations within existing communities that present infill development opportunities and are easily accessible to transit, jobs, shopping and services.'" The new development was to be concentrated in areas that covered only five percent of the Bay Area's surface area. In Citizens' view, the Agencies unnecessarily adopted "a draconian, high-density land-use regime."
 
Citizens relied heavily on the language of the Act, which states that regional targets "must take account of" GHG reductions expected from statewide mandates. However, the Appellate Court explained that the Act requires CARB to consider statewide mandates in formulating regional targets, not that the regional agencies consider the reductions expected from the statewide mandates in determining how to meet those targets. According to the court, the "only legally tenable interpretation of [the Act] is that it requires the Board to set targets for, and the Agencies to strive to meet these targets by, emissions reductions resulting from regionally developed land use and transportation strategies, and that it requires those reductions to be in addition to those expected from the statewide measures." If Citizens' argument that the statewide mandates targets were sufficient for the regional plan was correct, then the Act's requirement for "an elaborate planning process" to create, adopt, and approve a regional plan would be superfluous. The court ultimately held that it was within CARB's discretion to require the Agencies to "achieve emissions reductions entirely through regional planning strategies so as to produce emissions reductions beyond those produced by statewide mandates" and affirmed the trial court's denial of Citizens' petition.
 

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