By Niran Somasundaram
On May 15, 2026, the San Diego Superior Court provided the latest twist in the ongoing saga between the City of Huntington Beach and the state Legislature’s relatively recent push to ensure compliance with State Housing Laws. The May 15, 2026, Order imposed a $10,000 a month penalty on the Orange County city for its failure to comply with California’s Housing Element Law, with fines escalating to $50,000 per month beginning June 2026 until the city cures its violations. In doing so, the court imposed one of the most concrete financial consequences to date on a California city for defying the state’s housing planning requirements. [People of California Ex Rel Rob Bonta vs. The City of Huntington Beach, Case No: 30-2023-01312235-CU-WM-CJC (San Diego Super. Ct. May 15, 2026).]
Background on State Housing Element Law
The Court’s May 15 Order is the latest development in a standoff of sorts that began nearly five and a half years ago. Under State Housing Element Law, every eight years each city and county is subject to a Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) allocation setting forth the number of new homes that each jurisdiction is expected to accommodate during the eight-year period. Every city and county in the state must update the Housing Element of the jurisdiction’s General Plan to identify sufficient sites to accommodate the RHNA allocation, including any necessary general plan amendments, updated policies and regulations, or rezoning necessary to ensure that the assigned quantity of housing can be legally developed. All cities within the Southern California Association of Governments region were required to submit a revised housing element for the sixth RHNA planning cycle by October 15, 2021.
The Huntington Beach Saga
Huntington Beach’s RHNA allocation was 13,368 housing units. The City missed the October 15, 2021 deadline for updating its housing element, only preparing a draft element for review by the State Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) by August 2022. This delay was not unique to Huntington Beach; many jurisdictions throughout California failed to adopt sixth cycle housing elements by the statutory deadline. However, after the draft received conditional approval from the State, Huntington Beach’s City Council declined to adopt the element at the local level. Councilmembers claimed that the RHNA process had inflated the City’s housing allocation and raised concerns about impacts on the “suburban character” of the community. In response, in February of 2023, HCD sent a notice of violation to the City Council and City officials stating that Huntington Beach had violated its duty under State law.
Huntington Beach was undeterred by the HCD notice and began an aggressive legal offensive against the state’s authority to require a housing element.
Huntington Beach filed a federal lawsuit in the Central District of California, Case No. 8:23-CV-00421, challenging the constitutionality of the Housing Element Law. This federal case was ultimately dismissed, with the Ninth Circuit affirming the dismissal and the U.S. Supreme Court declining to hear an appeal. Huntington Beach also adopted Ordinance No. 4285, which purported to allow the City to deny applicants’ use of the Builder’s Remedy within the City – one of State Housing Law’s most potent punishments for jurisdictions that fail to adopt a housing element.
California Files Suit
In March 2023, Attorney General Rob Bonta, Governor Newsom, and the Department of Housing and Community Development filed suit against Huntington Beach in response to the adoption of Ordinance No. 4285, later amending the complaint to include a cause of action against the City for its failure to adopt a compliant housing element. In May 2024, the San Diego County Superior Court determined that Huntington Beach had a ministerial duty under state law to adopt a legally compliant sixth cycle housing element by October 15, 2021, which it breached by failing to adopt a sixth cycle housing element altogether. However, the Superior Court Order was silent on remedy. The Order was appealed to the Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, with the City arguing, among other things, that State Housing Element Law does not apply to Charter Cities, which are granted a larger scope of local regulatory power under the California Constitution. On September 11, 2025, the Court of Appeal denied Huntington Beach’s argument, finding that State Housing Element Law is reasonably related to the resolution of a statewide concern and narrowly tailored to avoid unnecessary interference with local governance. The Court of Appeal remanded the case to the Superior Court, with direction to enter a new order compliant with State Housing Element law remedies.
The Superior Orders the City to Adopt Compliant Housing Element
On December 19, 2025, the San Diego County Superior Court issued a sweeping order requiring Huntington Beach to adopt a compliant housing element within 120 days, adopt conforming zoning code changes within 120 days from adoption of the compliant housing element, and affirming that the Builder’s Remedy would continue to apply until the City did so. The State then moved for financial penalties.
On May 15, 2026, the Superior Court imposed the requested penalties, relying on the penalty provisions of Government Code Section 65009.1(a)(1), enacted on January 1, 2025, under Senate Bill 1037, which established mandatory minimum penalties for jurisdictions failing to adopt compliant housing elements on time. The Superior Court imposed a penalty of $10,000 a month for every month since the Section’s effective date, with an escalation to $50,000 per month beginning in June 2026 until the City has adopted a housing element in substantial compliance with State law.
The Superior Court’s penalties accomplished what years of HCD letters could not. Huntington Beach adopted a housing element on June 16, 2026, in an attempt to limit penalties, though HCD has not yet determined whether the adopted housing element is in compliance with State law. Under the Superior Court’s Order, the City is already liable for $270,000 in penalties as of this writing.
Conclusion and Implications
In recent years, the California Legislature has attempted to give State housing laws greater teeth to spur local compliance. However, these laws have largely manifested themselves on a project-by-project basis. Huntington Beach’s unwillingness to even engage with State Housing Elements presented a more systemic question: how far are courts willing to go to ensure that the State’s Housing Laws are taken seriously?
The answer, at least from the San Diego County Superior Court, is clear. The financial penalties imposed by the Superior Court did what years of litigation had yet to accomplish—as of June 2026, more than halfway through the sixth RHNA cycle, Huntington Beach has adopted a sixth cycle housing element. By now, the majority of California’s 539 jurisdictions are in compliance with the sixth cycle’s housing element requirements. However, the penalties imposed on Huntington Beach may signal that local governments will face increased pressure to comply with State Housing Element Law timelines when the seventh cycle comes around. The court’s order is available online here:
