Rule 3.2221.Time

Streamlined CEQA project litigation runs on statutory deadlines built for speed, and Rule 3.2221 protects that speed on two fronts. Subdivision (a) limits the court to granting extensions only for good cause and only when doing so serves the interests of justice — a deliberately tight standard compared to routine civil practice. Subdivision (b) addresses party-driven extensions: if the parties stipulate to extend a deadline for performing some act, they are treated as having agreed the underlying statutory deadline for resolving the whole action shifts by the same number of days, and as having waived any objection to the resulting delay. Any such stipulation still needs the court’s approval before it takes effect.

Subdivision (c) supplies the enforcement mechanism. If a party misses a deadline set by these rules or by court order, the court can issue an order to show cause why one of several sanctions should not follow: shortening that party’s time for other steps in the case, dismissing the petition if the petitioner or plaintiff is the one who fell short, removing the action from the expedited streamlined-review track if the respondent or a real party in interest is responsible, or any other sanction the court finds fitting. The range runs from a modest scheduling penalty to the loss of the expedited process altogether, reflecting how central the timeline is to this chapter’s purpose.