Public Interest Briefs

Judge Sets Aside Los Angeles County General Plan

On March 13, 1975, in a decision that will have a dramatic impact on the development of the Los Angeles County area for the foreseeable future, Superior Court Judge David A. Thomas struck down the Los Angeles County General Plan June 28, 193. The 1973 Plan had set down the proposed patterns of development within the County through the year 1990.

Calling the Plan a “blueprint for urban sprawl,” Center attorneys brought the lawsuit two years ago on behalf of a coalition of environmental, inner city, and planning groups known as the “Coalition for Los Angeles County Planning in the Public Interest.” After two years of litigation, the relief granted in the final judgment on July 9, 1975, was as sweeping as any relief ever granted in a planning case in the United States.

In the strongest possible words, Judge Thomas condemned the County’s environmental study prepared in connection with the 1973 plan stating that the study consisted “largely of pretentious statements of the obvious; generalities concerning recommended action; vague allusions as to what the recommended action will accomplish; and meaningless offhand references to alternative measures. It is simply a sterile declaration of unsupported generalities almost entirely failing to convey any factual information.”

In particular, Judge Thomas found the study contained “no meaningful information” about why the County had more than doubled the amount of land it was making available for current and future development–when the projected population growth of Los Angeles County was drastically declining. In addition, the Court specifically determined that much of the new land proposed for urbanization was either of outstanding ecological significance or within areas subject to severe flood damage. Making this land available for urbanization, according to the Court, “was without any rational explanation at all” and was instead “merely the result of the arbitrary planning procedures employed by the staff” in preparing the 1973 General Plan.

Judge Thomas concluded that the County’s planning staff had the 1973 plan “largely to conform to preexisting zoning and individual requests of property owners for particular treatment of specific parcels” instead of preparing a plan based on adequate environmental information, adequate relationship to comprehensive goals and policies, projections of future population growth, and appropriate evaluation of alternatives.

The Court’s swapping judgment sets aside the County’s 1973 General Plan and orders the County to prepare valid plans and to undertake a comprehensive rezoning of the unincorporated areas within the County. It prevents the County from issuing building and other permits in approximately 1.5 million acres within the County except in accordance with standards designed to protect those areas from urban encroachment.

The County has not yet determined whether it will appeal Judge Thomas’s ruling.

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