California Senate Bills Respond to Trump Administration’s Rollback of Environmental Laws

The Trump Administration has begun taking significant action to deliver its promised repeal or replacement of various federal laws affecting air, water, climate, endangered species, and public land. To both hedge against and work around an expected ongoing rollback of environmental, natural resources and public health protections, California Senators recently unveiled three bills:

• SB 49 would make federal environmental standards enforceable under state law. (de León, D-Los Angeles, and Stern, D-Agoura Hills)
• SB 50 would establish a policy to discourage the conveyance of federal public land in California to owners other than the federal government. (Allen, D-Santa Monica)
• SB 51 includes proposed whistleblower protections for federal employees working in the environmental sciences and climate change-related fields. (Jackson, D-Santa Barbara)

A brief summary of each bill is available in this Client Alert provided by Meyers Nave attorney Greg Newmark.

In an article published in the Daily Journal on March 20, Greg specifically analyzed SB 49 to create an advisory on the important legal issues that would emerge if the bill is enacted in its current form. Please click here to read the article.