Impact at CLIPI
After graduating from Cal Berkeley Law School, Yost served as the first head of the California Attorney General’s Environmental Section, where he led public enforcement of CEQA. He authored the Attorney-General’s amicus curiae brief in the Friends of Mammoth case in which the California Supreme Court ruled that CEQA applies to government agency approval of private development. (Hall drafted the Sierra Club’s amicus brief in that case supporting the same broad interpretation of CEQA).
Later, Yost became General Counsel of the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) during the Carter administration, authoring the definitive National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations. In the early 1980s, Yost served as a CLIPI staff attorney heading its Washington office.
After CLIPI, Yost went into private practice, focusing on environmental regulatory issues. In 2010, he received the American Bar Association’s Award for Distinguished Achievement in Environmental Law and Policy. Yost recently retired as a partner at Dentons US in San Francisco.
