Elon Musk Versus the California Coastal Commission
Happy Tuesday and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week’s newsletter takes an extended look at SpaceX’s legal battle with the California Coastal Commission.
On the surface, this is not a story about housing, zoning, urbanism, or other major themes of this newsletter. However, the conflict between the world’s most successful space company and (arguably) its most powerful land-use regulator is a great illustration of the latter’s tendency for capricious power grabs.
Today, the Coastal Commission is trying to stop rocket launches. Tomorrow, it’ll likely be back to trying to stop coastal housing because it’s a little too tall.
Elon Musk Versus the California Coastal Commission
For decades, the California Coastal Commission has had near-unchecked authority to regulate development along the state’s 860-mile coastline, and it’s been unafraid of using it.
It’s now trying to expand its terrestrial authority to outer space.
This past week, the commission voted to oppose plans by private space company SpaceX to launch more rockets from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, California.
The commission is asserting for the first time that SpaceX must get coastal development permits to shoot more rockets into space. SpaceX and the Department of the Air Force have conversely argued that SpaceX launches are federal activity that’s exempt from the commission’s regulatory powers.
After the commission’s vote last week, SpaceX filed a lawsuit against the commission, arguing the agency is acting well outside its authority. The company asserts that the commission’s true motives are not protecting the coast, but rather punishing SpaceX CEO Elon Musk for his political views.
“Rarely has a government agency made so clear that it was exceeding its authorized mandate to punish a company for the political views and statements of its largest shareholder and CEO,” reads the SpaceX complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Central California.
The Background
The legal controversy between SpaceX and the California Coastal Commission sits at a complex intersection of federal and state coastal protection laws, which requires a little bit of unpacking.
In 1972, as part of a wave of slow-growth environmental legislation, Congress passed the Coastal Zone Management Act to protect coastal environments.
The law encouraged states to establish their own coastal agencies to regulate private development along the coast. It also encouraged them to create coastal management plans, which—once approved by the federal government—would give state coastal regulators a limited say over federal actions along the coast.
That same year, California voters approved the creation of the California Coastal Commission.
The commission is entitled to review “federal agency actions” for consistency with its coastal management plan and can object to federal actions that are inconsistent with that plan. But that power is ultimately advisory. Federal agencies can still proceed with activities that state regulators object to, provided they try to comply with state coastal management plans to the maximum practical extent.
The Coastal Commission has much more control over the “federally permitted” activities of private parties.
Federal permit applicants must show state coastal regulators their activities are consistent with coastal management plans. If state regulators find a private party’s activities aren’t consistent with a coastal management plan, they can object to their federal permit application, and the federal government is generally forbidden from granting that permit.
Whose Rocket Launches Are They, Anyway?
SpaceX’s dispute with the Coastal Commission boils down to whether its rocket launches are “federal agency activity” the commission can’t ultimately stop or private “federally permitted activity” which they can.
SpaceX says in its lawsuit that since it started launching rockets from Vandenburg Sp
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