By Forcing U.C. Berkeley to Cut Enrollment, Have California’s NIMBYs Finally Gone Too Far?

“Not in my backyard” (NIMBY) activists in Berkeley, California, might end up winning the battle but losing the war in their legal crusade to stop the growth of the student population at the University of California, Berkeley, campus.

Activists’ success in a court-ordered enrollment freeze at the university—which would result in thousands of otherwise accepted Berkeley students receiving rejection letters—is prompting a backlash from both Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers that could undo their efforts to deprive incoming freshmen of a Berkeley education.

The governor is asking the California Supreme Court to side with the university and stay the impending enrollment freeze. Legislators are going further with a proposed bill to deprive litigious neighbors of their ability to stop people from going to a school that is eager to accept them.

“It is unacceptable for NIMBY lawsuits to strip students of their right to a quality education by blocking housing and effectively forcing schools to reduce enrollment,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener (D–San Francisco) in a press release Tuesday announcing the introduction of Senate Bill (S.B.) 886.

The bill would exempt public universities’ staff, students, and faculty housing projects from having to go through the onerous environmental review required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

Those reviews can take years to complete and cost millions of dollars. CEQA also allows citizens and third parties to sue if they think an environmental review wasn’t thorough enough, making it a favored tool of anti-development activists looking to gum up projects they don’t like.

That includes the group Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods. In 2019, it sued U.C. Berkeley and the U.C. Board of Regents (the U.C. system’s governing body) arguing that an environmental study of a new on-campus faculty housing project didn’t adequately examine the impacts of a growing student population on things like traffic and noise, as required by CEQA.

In August 2020, a lower court judge agreed with Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods and ordered U.C. Berkeley to freeze enrollment at 2020–2021 levels until a new study on the impacts o