Huntington Beach appeals housing decision to Ninth Circuit

Huntington Beach is continuing its fight against the state of California’s housing mandates.

The city filed an appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday, hoping to reverse a November decision against it by a federal judge.

U.S. District Judge Fred Slaughter ruled then that Huntington Beach did not have standing in federal court to file suit against the state, despite City Atty. Michael Gates’ claims that RHNA requirements to zone for 13,368 units in this housing cycle — and the requirement to sign a Statement of Overriding Considerations — violated Surf City’s 1st Amendment protection for compelled speech and 14th Amendment due process protections.

In his November ruling, Slaughter cited City of S. Lake Tahoe vs. California Tahoe Reg’l Plan. Agency, a case from 1980. But Gates said Thursday that South Lake Tahoe was a general law city, whereas Huntington Beach is a charter city.

“General law cities are widely accepted as subdivisions of the state,” Gates said in a phone interview. “But a charter city, there is some level of emancipation from the state of California. That’s what a charter’s all about, it’s basically somewhat of a Declaration of Independence, and that independence is to govern local affairs. Zoning and housing and planning and land use have always been considered a matter of local governance.”

City Atty. Michael Gates, shown speaking at a mayor’s town hall meeting in August, maintains that “zoning and housing and planning and land use have always been considered a matter of local governance.”

(File Photo)

Gates’ appeal cites more recent cases, Haytasingh vs. City of San Diego (2021) and City of Redondo Beach vs. Padilla (2020), that he says support the idea that charter cities are not just subdivisions of the state.

“They’re standalone, and have a right to sue in federal court,” he said. “The federal court is a forum to redress federal violations of law. If, upon appeal, the Ninth Circuit agrees with us, then we’re going to be able to proceed with a very robust challenge to the state’s RHNA mandate scheme. And we’ll be able to do that in federal court, which is what we aimed to do from the very beginning.”

Huntington Beach’s conservative City Council majority has refused to adopt a state-compliant housing element including the RHNA requirements. The state sued last April, though a judge ordered a stay in that lawsuit until the federal case was decided.

The issue has been political, with some convinced that Huntington Beach is wasting its time and resources fighting a losing battle. But city leaders have stated that they have no desire to see the city lose its suburban way of life.

“The city’s ongoing fight against the state for local control of our city’s development is imperative,” Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark said in a statement Thursday. “These housing mandates are a prime example of state overreach, and I applaud our city attorney and his staff for not only protecting our city, but also our City Council’s 1st Amendment rights.”