The Coast in Contest: Federal Pressure, State Power, and the Shifting Map of Coastal Regulation

California's coastal zone is among the most heavily regulated land in the nation, and the rules governing it are in unusual flux. The California Supreme Court's unanimous April 2026 decision in Shear Development Co., LLC v. California Coastal Commission reined in the Coastal Commission's appellate jurisdiction over local coastal development permits, holding that courts apply independent judgment to questions of local coastal program interpretation and owe no deference to the agency when its reading and the county's are equally plausible. That decision is used as a springboard into the larger landscape: how the Coastal Act and local coastal programs allocate authority, where the current wave of deregulatory pressure is coming from, and what it means when the federal government, through a Commerce Department review of California's coastal management program under the Coastal Zone Management Act, signals interest in loosening the state's hold over offshore energy, development, and infrastructure. The session steps back from any single case to examine coastal zone regulation as a whole and the practical consequences for practitioners advising developers, local governments, and environmental clients in a moment when the regulatory map is being redrawn.