In what appears to be a new application of California’s landmark — yet often criticized — environmental law, a union representing state legal workers invoked the statute to challenge Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2025 return-to-office mandate.
The union argued that the state’s mandate of in-office work four days a week wasn’t properly reviewed under the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA, according to a letter sent this week to more than 104 state agencies and departments. Thousands of state employees have been working from home since the COVID-19 pandemic, but the return-to-office mandate is now set to go into effect July 1, according to union officials.
The letter from CASE, a labor group that represents attorneys, administrative law judges and hearing officers employed by state agencies, argued that the mandate “will result in significant environmental impacts,” and promised legal action if the state doesn’t conduct such an environmental review.
“Clearly, the state’s blanket mandate that more than 90,000 workers commute to offices four days a week will impact California’s environment,” Richard Drury, an attorney representing CASE, said in a statement. “But no environmental impact report for this project exists. We are asking the state to complete the report its own laws require before moving forward.”
The letter argued that the four-day return to office “will require hundreds of thousands of additional monthly commutes by state workers, creating hundreds of thousands of new car trips and thousands of tons of additional air pollution from automobile tailpipes.”
The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
CEQA, adopted in 1970, has been credited for protecting California’s natural resources and minimizing pollutants, but it’s also increasingly come under fire for its broad application, sometimes weaponized by opponents of a project, even environmentally friendly ones, like bike lanes, or needed housing.
UC Davis law professor Chris Elmendorf said he wasn’t surprised to see union attorneys try to apply CEQA to personnel policies, but he did find it novel.
And given case law about CEQA, he said the union has “a very plausible argument.” But he also said it again illustrates how CEQA’s “across-the-board rule that always favors the status quo … is not a very practical” one, said Elmendorf, who tracks environmental legislation that affects housing. He has become a proponent of CEQA reform.
“It will continue to be used strategically by people who don’t like a particular decision to throw sand in the gears and get leverage,” Elmendorf said.
He said he wasn’t sure how the case might be handled, but he could see the legislature once again stepping in to narrow this interpretation of CEQA, as they have frequently done in recent years to expedite projects.
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