One of the major boogeymen in building along the coast of California for decades has been the 'California Coastal Commission' (CCC). The commission is described as a 'state agency within the California Natural Resources Agency with quasi-judicial control of land and public access along the state's 1,100 miles of coastline' but in point of fact has independent life or project death decision authority over every stick and stone along the entirety of the California coast.
This appointed board of arbitrary, authoritarian, overtly political, and fanatical environmental Nazis has been a costly and mostly frustrating irritant to people who bought homes or lots in good faith, had well-laid plans for building or improving on the place of their dreams, only to be crushed at the last second by CCC demands or denials out of the blue, even with every other reuqired permit in hands and fee paid.
They are legendary and were made even more so to folks who had never heard or experienced their vicious capriciousness during this epic Adam Carolla rant during the LA fires almost a year ago.
Carolla was sitting in a hotel room waiting on word whether he had a home left, and went off on the deep-blue, wealthy LA voters who were now in the same homeless boat as their lesser neighbors. He explained how they were in for a shock as they confronted what they've been blithely voting for all these years. He brutally hits the CCC at 2:30 into the video.
Not only does the CCC claim the right to intervene in how a property is or is not being developed, but it has also taken upon itself the right to appeal the issuance of permits by other authorities - like counties or townships - to itself.
Confused yet?
There's something called the Pacific Legal Fund (PLF), and they have a nearly 20-year-long legal case against the CCC back before the CA Supreme Court again for this very thing.
Pacific Legal Foundation is back at the California Supreme Court to represent veteran builder Tim Shea in a high-stakes property rights case that could finally clarify how California’s coastal permitting system works. On Dec. 3, PLF attorney Jeremy Talcott delivered oral arguments challenging the California Coastal Commission’s attempt to override San Luis Obispo County’s approval of Shea’s building of four homes.
The dispute traces back more than 20 years. In 2003, Shea purchased eight residential lots in the coastal community of Los Osos with the intention to build and sell a home on each one. The County approved his plan in two stages—four homes now, four homes later—under the condition that he install public infrastructure for all eight up front.
“It was expensive, but I had it in writing and banked on the idea that the government’s word would stand,” Shea said.
He built and sold the first four homes without a hitch, giving families a foothold in one of the country’s most housing-constrained states. In 2017, his permits for the remaining homes were approved by the County under the Local Coastal Program, a County ordinance regulating development in the coastal zone that, once certified by the CCC, becomes the controlling land use law.
Then came the twist: The CCC appealed the County’s approval—to itself (the CCC is the only agency in the nation where members of the Commission can appeal another government’s decision to themselves).
The CCC also claimed authority based on the homes supposedly being in an “Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area.” But the County LCP designated such areas only using official maps—and Shea’s properties were not within any of those designations. In essence, the CCC attempted to cherry-pick a single drawing within the LCP—not an official map—that did include Shea’s property and claimed that it was sufficient to “designate” the property as ESHA.
The CCC’s wrongful assertion of jurisdiction put Shea into years of regulatory purgatory: the County had approved his permits, but until the CCC’s claim that it had the final word was resolved, Shea could do nothing.
The CCC's lawyers argued to the court that the board was empowered to be the omnipotent kings of the coast.
...Counsel for the CCC argued that the agency is the expert supervisor of all coastal permitting—the coastal czar—such that the courts should afford the CCC’s claim to expanded jurisdiction a high degree of deference. Talcott countered that CCC-certified LCPs are empowered specifically to address local permitting issues and that the CCC may override local decisions only in the limited circumstances the Coastal Act permits—not by rewriting any local rule it finds inconvenient.
This is precisely the kind of dystopian overreach Carolla was alluding to. Well. Not alluding - promising the folks who were staring at rebuilding after Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and the other fires. They might make it through state and local hoops, but then they'd hit the CCC, or the CCC would hit them.
So Newsom did something completely untoward for him in the immediate aftermath of the fires - he suspended the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the California Coastal Act so rebuilding could proceed with no state impediments.
As many people noted last January, that in itself was a tacit admission that state interference in everyday development or simple property improvements was out of control.
That Democrats have to suspend enforcement of CEQA and California Coastal Commission in order to rebuild LA is a complete and total admission that these laws are a huge impediment to affordable housing in California. pic.twitter.com/wRa1m69gls
— Conn Carroll (@conncarroll) January 12, 2025
In March, Congressman Kevin Kiley introduced a bill amending the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972, which would strip the CCC of some of its imperial power, not to mention some of the $48M in federal funding it receives. It's gone nowhere so far, and the CCC brushed him off as an annoyance.
That commision believes in sole existence. That they have supreme power over vast area's of land. That they hold the future of so many citizens of Ca in their control. All supported by Newsom.
— gundog (@vincent_3716) March 15, 2025
...In reality, the bill is entirely designed to rein in this out-of-control agency that has blocked fire prevention and water projects, trampled on property rights, and threatened our national security.
This explains Newsom's hasty action to suspend the statutes - he thought he would be avoiding an ugly clash between desperate homeowners and businesses in a time of need, and an agency that had grown in unchecked power during his tenure as governor.
But Newsom miscalculated the depths of depravity the CCC was willing to stoop to in order to regulate the everyday minutiae of rebuilding, or of trying to rebuild lives.
He wasn't specific enough as far as what he'd exempted from the two acts' oversight, for instance.
Your house previously had a pool and/or a deck? What a shame the CCC says you can't have one now.
And even though homes are now exempt in Palisades, the CCC for some inexplicable reason still has rights to issue permits on pools, decks, and ADUs. Makes zero sense.
— BORED (@BoredElonMusk) December 9, 2025
When @CAgovernor issued the exec order he should have included those items which are common on almost every…
...When @CAgovernor issued the exec order he should have included those items which are common on almost every parcel.
The PLF has put together a short film with background explaining the skullduggery the CCC is now pulling in the firezone as people try to rebuild their lives.
...The Globe reported that the California Coastal Commission’s environmental zealots have decades of regulatory activism, and are notorious for running roughshod over Californians’ property rights. The Pacific Legal Foundation has spent as many decades suing the CCC over gross violations of California property owners’ rights. If you want your blood to boil, read PLF’s big win in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission in which the Coastal Commission agreed to grant the Nollans’ building permit—but only if the Nollans consented to give away one-third of their property to the state.
Better than that, the Pacific Legal Foundation just published this short documentary about the out-of-control tyrannical state agency, which operates more like the mafia than public-interest regulators, and how the Coastal Commission is a significant part of holding up rebuilding in the Pacific Palisades – even after Gov. Gavin Newsom, known for his support of big-government, suspended the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the California Coastal Act to facilitate rebuilding. The PLF act asks why would such executive orders be necessary to rebuild after the Palisades fires?
This documentary from Pacific Legal Foundation tells the shocking story of the California Coastal Commission, an out-of-control state agency that controls over 1.5 million acres of coastal land.
You will learn: How one family was fined $4 million for nothing. Why the agency claimed one home was a “psychological barrier” and tried to extort the homeowner. The story of one homebuilder who’s taking the agency to the California Supreme Court. Through personal experience, archival footage, and legal history, this short film shows how a single bureaucratic agency became judge, jury, and executioner for California homeowners on the coast.
Pacific Legal Foundation, a national public interest law firm, represented the families featured in this film and won a landmark victory against the California Coastal Commission at the U.S. Supreme Court in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission. PLF currently represents Tim Shea against the Commission at the California Supreme Court in Shear Development v. California Coastal Commission.
There are three new commission members, all of whom are developers, and talk is that the CCC is trying to do damage control.
...In a push to address the state’s gripping housing crisis, the California Coastal Commission last week approved a rule change to make it easier to build affordable housing in Monterey and elsewhere along the hundreds of miles of the Pacific coast.
It was the latest effort by the powerful state agency to combat its poor reputation among housing advocates and Democratic leaders who see it as an obstacle to drastic housing reform in California’s coveted coastal regions. While minor and uncontroversial, the amendment was one of a few shifts the commission has made in recent months in an effort to be viewed as playing a part in addressing the state’s crippling housing crisis.
...Gov. Gavin Newsom, a critic of the commission, and other top Democrats have appointed three pro-development local officials this year to help get more housing and other developments approved along the Pacific coast.
...Scrutiny of the commission has accelerated in the Newsom administration, as the governor has publicly chided the agency for its broad powers. After the Los Angeles fires, he swiftly moved to suspend all of its authority over rebuilding efforts in the Pacific Palisades, which abut the coastline.
Last year, the commission rejected billionaire Elon Musk’s proposal to increase the number of SpaceX rocket launches off the Santa Barbara coast while criticizing his support of President Donald Trump. Newsom said he was “with Elon” after the company filed a lawsuit claiming political discrimination. The case is still pending.
It's suddenly not so cool being unpopular dictators, which kind of means they could have been reasonable all along but chose not to.
Coastal Commission Looks to Shed Its Controversial Reputation
Commission members gathered in downtown Sacramento last week for their monthly meeting to address the latest developments along California’s coast.
On the agenda was a Santa Monica hotel failing to comply with accessibility requirements and the Diablo Canyon power plant – the last remaining nuclear site in California – trying to stay open despite mounting environmental concerns.
Also on the schedule was a rule change that would give coastal affordable housing projects more time to begin construction.
In a unanimous decision, the 12 voting members of the quasi-judicial agency approved it, giving projects up to five years, rather than two, to break ground.
Commissioners and staff lauded the approval as a step in the right direction to allow affordable housing projects more time to get the funding they need.
They also cheered the decision as a step toward remaking the controversial reputation of the 53-year-old agency.
That acknowledgement is now especially hurtful to those still grappling with the consequences of being targeted by the CCC's edicts. What if you couldn't afford a lawyer to guide you or fight back?
It could all be a momentary ruse, as well. Power corrupts, and turning loose of power is one of the hardest things for humans who have it to do.
It's hard enough to take out one king.
When there's a whole table full of them? Good luck.
Carolla looks like a seer.
