The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires a lead agency, as defined, to prepare, or cause to be prepared, and certify the completion of an environmental impact report on a project that it proposes to carry out or approve that may have a significant effect on the environment or to adopt a negative declaration if it finds that the project will not have that effect. CEQA also requires a lead agency to prepare a mitigated negative declaration for a project that may have a significant effect on the environment if revisions in the project would avoid or mitigate that effect and there is no substantial evidence that the project, as revised, would have a significant effect on the environment.

CEQA exempts from its requirements the adoption of an ordinance by a city or county to issue a zoning variance, special use permit, or conditional use permit for a dwelling unit to be constructed, or which is attached to or detached from, a primary residence on a parcel zoned for a single-family residence, as provided, or and the adoption of an ordinance to provide for the creation of accessory dwelling units in areas zoned to allow single-family or multifamily dwelling residential use.

This bill would expand the above CEQA exemption to include the adoption of an ordinance by a city or county to provide for the creation of junior accessory dwelling units in single-family residential zones.