Opinion ID: 2548235
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Plaintiffs' Attack on the County's Maintenance and Continued Enforcement of the Allegedly Preempted Ordinance

Text: As noted earlier, Government Code section 65009, subdivision (c)(1)(B) sets a 90-day limitations period, running from the legislative body's decision, for bringing an action [t]o attack, review, set aside, void, or annul the decision of a legislative body to adopt or amend a zoning ordinance. Code of Civil Procedure section 338, subdivision (a) sets a three-year period for an action upon a liability created by statute, other than a penalty or forfeiture. The three-year limitation, running from accrual of the action, does not apply where, in special cases, a different limitation is prescribed by statute. (Code Civ. Proc., § 312.) Plaintiffs contend the 90-day limitation prescribed by section 65009, subdivision (c)(1)(B) does not apply to their preemption claim because their challenge is not to the Board's decisions to adopt or amend the Ordinance, but to the Board's failure to repeal or amend the Ordinance and its continued enforcement despite having been preempted by the Costa-Hawkins Act in 1996. Application of section 65009 to claims of preemption by a later-enacted statute is unworkable, they argue, because it would preclude any challenge to an ordinance that was valid when enacted but later preempted by state law. [7] Hence, plaintiffs argue, Code of Civil Procedure section 338, subdivision (a)'s more general three-year limitations period for statutory liabilities is the applicable statute of limitations. [8] The County maintains that facial attacks on such assertedly preempted laws are subject to the 90-day limitation, but that here (as the Court of Appeal held) the period ran from the Ordinance's last substantive amendment in 1997, rather than from its 1981 adoption. Code of Civil Procedure section 338, subdivision (a), the County argues, is inapplicable because a more specific limitations period, that in Government Code section 65009, subdivision (c)(1)(B), applies. We agree with plaintiffs that their challenge to the Ordinance, to the extent it is based on preemption by later enacted state statutes (i.e., the Costa-Hawkins Act and Civil Code section 51.2), is subject to the three-year limit of Code of Civil Procedure section 338 rather than the 90-day limit of Government Code section 65009. Plaintiffs, in claiming the County has breached a duty to bring its zoning code into compliance with later enacted state law, are not complaining of the Ordinance's adoption but of the Board's failure, since the enactment of Civil Code section 51.2 in 1984 and the Costa-Hawkins Act in 1995, to repeal the Ordinance or amend it to conform to state law. To this extent, therefore, the action is not one to attack, review, set aside, void, or annul the decision of a legislative body to adopt ... a zoning ordinance. (§ 65009, subd. (c)(1)(B), italics added.) [9] Moreover, a challenge to the Ordinance based on its conflict with state laws passed in 1984 and 1995 could not have been brought within 90 days of the Ordinance's 1982 effective date. (See Hawkins v. County of Marin, supra, 54 Cal.App.3d at pp. 593-594, 126 Cal.Rptr. 754.) Section 65009 was intended to require prompt challenges to zoning ordinances, but not to demand the impossible. [10] Plaintiffs' petition for declaratory and injunctive relief against the Ordinance's future enforcement is, nevertheless, untimely. The newest of the state statutes upon which plaintiffs rely for their preemption claim, the Costa-Hawkins Act, came into effect on January 1, 1996, more than three years before the petition was filed. Assuming the Costa-Hawkins Act subjects the County to a duty to repeal or amend the Ordinance to conform to state law, that duty first aroseand was first violated by the County's inactionwhen the Costa-Hawkins Act became effective. As the period in Code of Civil Procedure section 338 begins running on accrual of the cause of action ( id., § 312), an action to enforce the County's asserted statutory duty had to be brought within three years of its initial violation, i.e., three years from the effective date of the assertedly preemptive statute. Plaintiffs argue their action was brought fewer than 3 years following the January 1, 1999, fully-effective date of Costa-Hawkins, apparently alluding to provisions of that law phasing in, between January 1, 1996, and January 1, 1999, vacancy decontrol on existing units already subject to local rent control ordinances. (See Civ. Code, § 1954.52, subd. (a)(3)(C).) But the conflict plaintiffs perceive between the Costa-Hawkins Act, which mandated immediate exemption of new units and eventual vacancy decontrol on all units, and the Ordinance, which restricted indefinitely rents on newly constructed second units, if it ever existed, existed as of the effective date of the Costa-Hawkins Act, January 1, 1996. If, as claimed, the County has, and is violating, a duty to repeal or amend the Ordinance to avoid a conflict with the state law, it had, and violated, that duty as of the day the state law came into effect. Plaintiffs' action to enforce a statutory obligation thus accrued on January 1, 1996; under Code of Civil Procedure section 338, they had three years from that date to bring it. Plaintiffs also argue the action as a whole is timely under Code of Civil Procedure section 338 because it was brought within three years of two applications of the Ordinanceone to the Sokolows in 1998 and one to Travis in 1999. They rely on Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. v. City of La Habra, supra, 25 Cal.4th at pages 818-825, 107 Cal.Rptr.2d 369, 23 P.3d 601, in which we deemed a facial attack on a local utility tax to accrue every time the city collected the tax. As applied here, the theory would hold a new facial invalidity claim (i.e., one seeking to overturn the legislative body's decision to adopt the zoning ordinance) accrues, and a new three-year period begins, whenever a zoning ordinance is employed to deny or impose conditions on a permit. The theory of continuous accrual under Code of Civil Procedure section 338, subdivision (a) would, in this context, create an illogical contrast with the application of Government Code section 65009, subdivision (c)(1)(B). In a facial challenge to a zoning ordinance based on preexisting statutes or the Constitution, plaintiffs are limited, under section 65009, subdivision (c)(1)(B), to 90 days from the ordinance's adoption, which is the first time such a challenge could be brought. When the challenge is instead based on a later enacted state statute, the limitations period (under Code Civ. Proc., § 338, subd. (a)) also runs, as we hold above, from the first time the challenge could be brought, i.e., the initial accrual of the cause of action. Plaintiffs' continuous accrual theory would delay running of the statute only in the latter case, thus providing an anomalous and unwarranted benefit to those challenging a zoning ordinance on the ground of its postadoption preemption. Promptness would be required in one case, under section 65009, subdivision (c)(1)(B), but illogically excused in the other, under Code of Civil Procedure section 338, subdivision (a). To adopt plaintiffs' theory would thus be to thwart the legislative purpose behind section 65009 without any necessity in justice or fairness. The express and manifest intent of section 65009 is to provide local governments with certainty, after a short 90-day period for facial challenges, in the validity of their zoning enactments and decisions. We hold (pt. I, ante ) that the statute nonetheless provides a property owner full opportunity to challenge the validity of a zoning ordinance, as pertinent to the validity of permit conditions, when it is applied to him or herthe earliest time such conditions can be challenged. The policy requiring prompt challenges to a zoning ordinance also gives way in cases of preemption by a later enacted state statute. Property owners or taxpayers must be permitted to challenge the ordinance on the basis of such preemption after the preemptive state statute has taken effecta challenge that could not have been made when, perhaps years earlier, the ordinance was first adopted. Both property owners and watchdog groups thus have, under our understanding of the statutes, full opportunity to challenge preempted ordinances on their face and in their application. The legislative policy of requiring a prompt challenge, running from the earliest date the action could be brought, nonetheless remains clear in section 65009. Were we to hold that a facial challenge to a zoning ordinance, based on a later enacted preemptive statute, need not be brought within three years of initial accrual (the state statute's effective date) but may instead be brought at any time within three years of any application of the ordinance, we would directly contravene that legislative policy. (Cf. Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. v. City of La Habra, supra, 25 Cal.4th at p. 825, 107 Cal. Rptr.2d 369, 23 P.3d 601 [continuous accrual rule adopted in absence of specific legislative guidance].) Alternatively, plaintiffs argue their taking claim comes within the five -year limitations period for an action arising out of the title to real property, or to rents or profits out of the same. (Code Civ. Proc., § 319; see also id., § 318 [five-year limitation for action for the recovery of real property].) We recently held the five-year period, though applicable to inverse condemnation actions based on a physical taking (see, e.g., Baker v. Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority (1985) 39 Cal.3d 862, 867-868, 218 Cal.Rptr. 293, 705 P.2d 866; Frustuck v. City of Fairfax (1963) 212 Cal.App.2d 345, 374, 28 Cal. Rptr. 357), did not apply to a regulatory taking claim based on enactment of a zoning ordinance, as such government action neither effected a physical invasion of the land nor impaired title to the land. ( Hensler, supra, 8 Cal.4th at p. 24, 32 Cal.Rptr.2d 244, 876 P.2d 1043.) [11] In any event, plaintiffs' taking claim rests on the County's demand that, as conditions of their permit approvals, they record rent and occupancy restrictions on their deeds. The specific statute of limitations for such a challenge to permit conditions, as discussed above, is Government Code section 65009, subdivision (c)(1)(E). Code of Civil Procedure sections 318 and 319 are thus inapplicable. (Code Civ. Proc., § 312; see Hensler, supra, 8 Cal.4th at p. 22, 32 Cal. Rptr.2d 244, 876 P.2d 1043.) Finally, plaintiffs suggest that preemption by state law renders a local ordinance not only unenforceable but also null and void, and that consequently in this case there is no applicable limitations period because there is essentially no ordinance.  Plaintiffs' claims would thus be timely whenever brought. Plaintiffs cite no authority for this approach, and we have discovered none. Nor does it appeal as a matter of logic. A preempted ordinance, while it may lack any legal effect or force, does not cease to exist; if it did cease to exist, any challenge to it would have no object. Plaintiffs here, for example, could not sensibly pray for an order that the County amend or repeal the Ordinance or stop enforcing it, if the Ordinance no longer existed. Just as section 65009, subdivision (c)(1)(E) applies to claims that a permit or condition is void (see Ching v. San Francisco Board of Permit Appeals, supra, 60 Cal.App.4th at pp. 891-894, 70 Cal.Rptr.2d 700; Hawkins v. County of Marin, supra, 54 Cal.App.3d at pp. 592-593, 126 Cal.Rptr. 754), so the statute of limitations governing the claim that an ordinance has been preempted by a later enacted state law, Code of Civil Procedure section 338, subdivision (a), applies despite the further contention that preemption rendered the ordinance void.