Three Lawsuits, Fifteen Years, One Project: Court Draws the Line on Successive CEQA Challenges

Bair v. California Department of Transportation (2026) 119 Cal.App.5th 579

Why This Matters

This decision offers important guidance on how claim preclusion doctrines apply to successive CEQA challenges arising from the same project, and reflects the courts’ growing impatience with serial litigation strategies.

Background

Bair is the third lawsuit over the last 15 years which challenged a highway project through an old-growth redwood grove which would reconfigure an existing 1 mile stretch in Humboldt County. This litigation may be familiar to some readers, as the prior published appellate decision faulted Caltrans’ EIR for failing to disclose the project’s pre-mitigation impact conclusions regarding the redwood trees and relying upon a non-regulatory handbook to conclude impacts were less than significant. (Lotus v. Department of Transportation (2014) 223 Cal.App.4th 645.) The second lawsuit involved a successful procedural challenge to an Addendum which attempted to fix the substantive deficiencies in the prior EIR. However, this second lawsuit did not address the substantive analysis in the Addendum. In response to these losses, Caltrans circulated the previous EIR and pre-existing Addendum for public review unchanged, and reapproved the project in 2023. Caltrans then sought discharge of the writ from the prior case.

The Court’s Ruling

This third case at issue in Bair involved a simultaneous challenge on the discharge of the writ from the prior case and a new independent lawsuit. Petitioner faulted Caltrans’ substantive analysis of biological impacts to the old-growth redwood trees. The Court of Appeal ruled that Petitioner’s third lawsuit was barred by res judicata/claim preclusion, which bars litigation not only of issues that were actually raised in the prior case, but those that could have been raised, but were not. In assessing the preclusive effect of the prior litigation, the court noted that the central question was “whether the revised EIR’s compliance with CEQA could have been adjudicated in response to the [agency’s] post judgment request to discharge the writ.” The Court reasoned that Petitioner could have appealed the ruling in the original Lotus case if they believed that the court erred, but they did not do so. In clarifying the standard for applicability of claim preclusion, the Court of Appeal disagreed with the reasoning in Central Delta Water Agency v. Department of Water Resources (2021) 69 Cal.App.5th 170.

The Bigger Picture

In a growing trend among CEQA cases, the Court lamented that CEQA is more often being used as “a never-ending battle…that can drag on for years, even decades.” Similar concerns were raised in Tiburon Open Space Committee v. County of Marin (2022) 78 Cal.App.5th 700, 781-783; Citizens of Goleta Valley v. Board of Supervisors (1990) 52 Cal.3d 553, 576 [“we caution that rules regulating the protection of the environment must not be subverted into an instrument for the oppression and delay of social, economic or recreational development and advancement.”]; County of Orange v. Superior Court (2003) 113 Cal.App.4th 1, 6 [“[t]he Legislature has obviously structured the legal process for a CEQA challenge to be speedy, so as to prevent it from degenerating into a guerilla war of attrition by which project opponents wear out project proponents.”].  While this might not be a legal basis for seeking dismissal of a CEQA case, practitioners may wish to incorporate similar themes into their briefing.

What to Watch

Readers should be aware that a request to de-publish this opinion was filed on May 26, 2026, which had not been addressed yet by the Supreme Court as of July 14, 2026.