Cruel and Controlling California Coastal Commission Commences Consuming Crow

The California Coastal Commission is ‘a state agency within the California Natural Resources Agency with quasi-judicial control of land and public access along the state’s 1,100 miles (1,800 km) of coastline.‘ They are a twelve-member board made up of six appointed from the general public and six appointed elected officials.

They have assumed imperial powers, running roughshod and wreaking havoc in people’s lives, city planning and development over the coast and points inland for decades.

I don’t believe it would be an overstatement to say they are universally despised for the arbitrary, often unwarranted, and questionably legal capriciousness of both their interventions and the disinterested cruelty with which they issue judgments, and ignore the human results of their royal edicts.

The CCC has long been part of a discussion about the creeping and intrusive dystopian nature of the power of ‘commissions’ that operate outside the purview of their original intent.

This kind of petty crap is all too common, and the teeniest tip of their tyrannical iceberg.

For the 250th anniversary of our country’s independence, Gavin Newsom‘s unelected California Coastal Commission cancels the Fourth of July fireworks celebration in Long Beach. pic.twitter.com/xCItCNbhp9

— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) April 16, 2026

One of the greatest rants about the CCC was contained in Adam Corolla’s hotel diatribe, recorded as he waited to hear whether he had a home or not as the Palisades fire raged through the hillsides of Los Angeles.

At 2:16, he launches into what is going to happen when all the deep blue voters from the Palisades wreckage who have to now pull permits meet the 28-year-old ‘b**ch from the California Coastal Commission’ who doesn’t give a flying fig.

It’s a clip that will remain forever #SuperGreen and prescient because this is exactly what has happened.

When Carolla’s rant went viral, I included it in a VIP post on the CCC, along with other examples of their heavy-handed authoritarianism. The duration of some of the disputes with people who had the wherewithal to fight the commission, as most who run afoul of it sadly do not, was simply appalling.

…There’s something called the Pacific Legal Fund (PLF), and they have a nearly 20-year-long legal case against the CCC back before the CA Supreme Court again for this very thing.

Pacific Legal Foundation is back at the California Supreme Court to represent veteran builder Tim Shea in a high-stakes property rights case that could finally clarify how California’s coastal permitting system works. On Dec. 3, PLF attorney Jeremy Talcott delivered oral arguments challenging the California Coastal Commission’s attempt to override San Luis Obispo County’s approval of Shea’s building of four homes. 

The dispute traces back more than 20 years. In 2003, Shea purchased eight residential lots in the coastal community of Los Osos with the intention to build and sell a home on each one. The County approved his plan in two stages—four homes now, four homes later—under the condition that he install public infrastructure for all eight up front. .. 

The commission is also known for making its own rules and judgments on cases when it can’t be bothered to wait for a case to be heard.

They have literally anointed themselves the final arbiters of all of their decisions, through judge, jury, and executioner phases. In the Palisades, the governor reportedly suspended all sorts of regulations to hustle rebuilding along.

The governor’s actions, said the CCC, don’t apply to us.

And even though homes are now exempt in Palisades, the CCC for some inexplicable reason still has rights to issue permits on pools, decks, and ADUs. Makes zero sense.

When @CAgovernor issued the exec order he should have included those items which are common on almost every…

— BORED (@BoredElonMusk) December 9, 2025

So you get the gist of this group.

One guy they tangled with who had the wherewithal to fight them was Elon Musk.

They yanked his permit to launch rockets at Vandenberg AFB, and not because of endangered desert tortoises, snail darters, or any such objection.

But because TRUMP.

…For some context, remember in October 2024, the California Coastal Commission voted to deny launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County because of Space X founder Elon Musk’s comments on X and his recent political activities.

The California Coastal Commission (CCC) is an unelected commission of political appointees that lords over locally elected city councils in cities and counties on the California coast.

The Globe reported on the CCC’s political bias:

“Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet,” said Commissioner Gretchen Newsom, who is not related to Governor Gavin Newsom. “It appears that rather than prioritizing the welfare of SpaceX employees and the environment, the focus has been on profit maximization.”

Commission chairwoman Caryl Hart added, “You could argue that it’s bringing in politics, but this is a political matter to some extent because it involves the US government, it involves the Coastal Commission. We are dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race.”

This not only ruffled Musk – then-Assemblyman Bill Essayli (R-Riverside) sent a letter and California Public Records Act request to the coastal commissioners demanding all communications about Elon Musk and SpaceX.

Musk filed a lawsuit, as have so many other intrepid victims before him. But this one had teeth. And while parts of it were dismissed, several of the bigger issues stuck to the CCC like glue and the commission caved on April 9.

…During an Oct. 10, 2024 public meeting, the commissioners were slated to discuss the impact of SpaceX’s proposal to increase Falcon 9 launches from 39 to 50 per year to “further expand and support SpaceX’s commercial satellite internet and telecommunications network,” according to the lawsuit.

But SpaceX stated in its suit that discussing the increased launch cadence “was the last topic on the commissioners’ minds,” saying that commissioners instead raised concerns unrelated to launch impacts.

During the meeting, SpaceX said the commissioners discussed topics unrelated to its proposal, including repeatedly discussing debunked theories about the use of its technologies by foreign governments and working conditions within the company.

…U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr., who presided over the case, declined to toss the lawsuit in its entirely in July 2025. The judge dismissed multiple First Amendment claims against the commissioners in their individual capacities, but allowed counts that alleged commissioners’ biased attempts to regulate SpaceX activity to proceed.

Discovery was underway in the lawsuit until the parties came to an agreement on April 9, court records show.

Well. The commission formally apologized to Elon and SpaceX today.

The California Coastal Commission issued a formal apology to SpaceX as part of settling the company’s federal lawsuit alleging officials denied increased launches at Vandenberg Space Force Base in retaliation for CEO Elon Musk’s political support of President Donald Trump in the 2024 election, according to documents unsealed on Tuesday.

…“In 2024, the commission reviewed consistency determinations by the U.S. Space Force for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch program at Vandenberg Space Force Base,” the commission said in its apology. “During that review, some commissioners made negative comments about SpaceX’s labor practices and its chief executive officer’s political views. The commission acknowledges that these political comments were irrelevant to the commission’s consistency review and were improper, and the commissioners apologize for those comments.”

And SpaceX has them by the chinny chin chins.

SCORE

…SpaceX agreed to dismiss all claims in exchange for several conditions under the agreement. Some of those conditions include not requiring the company to obtain a coastal development permit under the Coastal Zone Management Act for “any aspect” of launch activity previously approved by the federal government and conducted at Vandenberg’s launch complexes, SLC-4 and SLC-6.

Activity includes “development and operation of launch vehicles and launch infrastructure,” such as road expansions and maintenance projects necessary for launch operations.

The agreement does not cover whether the commission may require SpaceX to obtain permits for certain off-base developments, including closures of Jalama Beach. Under the agreement, SpaceX is required to regularly provide the commission with data monitoring the impact of sonic booms on the Channel Islands.

But that wasn’t the end of the humiliation at the hands of the legal system for the imperial cabal. What is being called a ‘landmark decision’ was a unanimous ruling handed down by the California Supreme Court against the CCC, ruling the commission had overstepped its bounds and interfered in a case where it had no authority.

As this is the commission’s modus operandi, it will seriously cramp their style.

…Also this week, the California Supreme Court unanimously agreed the commission overstepped its authority when it blocked a developer in Los Osos from building houses he had already been granted permits for.

Attorney Jeremy Talcott of the Pacific Legal Foundation said the commission lacked the power to intervene in that situation.

“If the Commission doesn’t have appellate jurisdiction they’re not allowed to step in and second guess the choices that the county is making,” Talcott said.

The developer, Tim Shea, took the commission to court and lost, then appealed and lost again before taking the case to the California Supreme Court.

There, justices agreed the California Coastal Commission overstepped.

“The fact that it was a unanimous opinion also really highlights just how far off the rails the Commission has gotten over the last few decades,” Talcott said.

The decision is being described as one of the first major checks on the California Coastal Commission in almost 40 years.

“This was a correction that was necessary you know to have the Supreme Court rain back in the Commission and some of the decisions previously that have been issued that really deferred to the Commission’s interpretations of local coastal programs,” Talcott said. “This opinion also signals to the lower courts that they should take a more active role in reviewing these cases and faithfully applying these land use laws in the way they are written.“

God bless Mr. Shea for keeping up the good fight against the unelected and unaccountable tyrants.

BREAKING: The California Supreme Court just unanimously ruled that the California Coastal Commission unlawfully overrode a county-approved building permit — one of the most significant checks on the Commission’s power in the 40 years since Nollan v. CCC. pic.twitter.com/qniY4eADmo

— Pacific Legal 🗡⚖️ (@PacificLegal) April 23, 2026

There are still plenty of denial cases working their way through the courts against the CCC. Elon’s settlement, if the commission’s decisions are based on politics, is only valid for the SpaceX case. So other, less well-heeled, Trump, Hilton, or, say, Spencer Pratt boosters may get denied a pool permit or something. They’ll have to go after the CCC separately.

But the CCC is officially on notice, and now there’s a case-and-judgment history to go by.

The CA Supreme Court ruling for overstepping bounds and authority sets a lovely precedent to follow should anyone from this point forward get told ‘no’ by that 28-year-old chica down at the CCC office.

Gives one hope and a smile.

 

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