There is a principle in American law, grounded in the Due Process and Takings clauses of the Constitution, that government cannot change the rules of a legal game after a party has already relied on the existing rules to their detriment. It goes by several names — vested rights, detrimental reliance, regulatory taking — but the core principle is consistent: you cannot retroactively strip people of rights they have already lawfully acquired.
State Senator Steve Padilla’s Senate Bills 886 and 887 test that principle directly. The legislation would strip data centers of CEQA exemptions — the same ministerial approval pathway that the IVDC used to receive its county approval. If enacted and applied retroactively to the IVDC, it would attempt to impose on an already-approved project the environmental review process that its approval lawfully avoided.
What the Bills Would Do
Under current California law, projects that receive ministerial approvals on appropriately zoned land are exempt from CEQA review. This is not a loophole — it is the intended operation of a statutory framework that distinguishes between discretionary and ministerial government decisions. The IVDC’s approval was ministerial, and it was CEQA-exempt on that basis.
Senator Padilla’s legislation would eliminate or significantly restrict that exemption for data centers. His stated rationale is that data centers should “pay their own way” and face full environmental review given their resource consumption. The argument is facially reasonable — but it ignores the distinction between prospective rule changes (which are legitimate) and retroactive application to already-approved projects (which raises serious constitutional questions).
A developer who obtained ministerial approval under existing law, invested in site preparation and financing, and proceeded in reliance on that approval has acquired legal rights that the state cannot simply nullify by subsequent legislation without triggering compensation requirements. The vested rights doctrine in California is well-established. A project that has received a final approval and demonstrated substantial reliance may be protected from retroactive rule changes.
The Political Context
Senator Padilla represents a San Diego district. He does not represent Imperial County. His constituents are not the farmworker families in Brawley and El Centro who would benefit from the IVDC’s union construction jobs. His constituents are not the children in Imperial County school districts who would receive a share of $28.75 million in annual property tax.
The legislation he introduced was introduced after the IVDC had already received its county approval, after the lawsuit challenging that approval had been filed, and after a coalition of opposition forces had been assembled against the project. The timing is not coincidental.
This is Sacramento asserting control over a local land use decision that a local government has already made through a lawful process. It is the state legislature serving as a backstop for a local legal challenge that the courts have described as legally insufficient. Whatever its stated environmental justification, the practical effect of the legislation — if applied to the IVDC — is to give the opposition a second bite at the apple after the courts have ruled against them the first time.
What This Means for Imperial County’s Economic Sovereignty
Imperial County’s ability to make its own land use decisions — to approve the development that its own residents need and its own government has lawfully authorized — is not unlimited. State law sets a framework. But within that framework, the county has genuine authority, and that authority means something.
When the state legislature introduces bills timed specifically to override a county’s approval of a specific project, it is asserting that Sacramento’s preferences take precedence over Imperial County’s judgment about its own economic development. That is a pattern Imperial County residents have experienced before — in water rights negotiations, in agricultural policy, in environmental regulation that imposes costs disproportionately on low-income rural communities while benefiting wealthier coastal constituencies.
The IVDC fight is, in part, about whether Imperial County gets to decide what is built in Imperial County. Senator Padilla’s bills are Sacramento’s answer. Imperial County’s residents deserve to weigh in on that answer — and to hold accountable the officials, state and local, who are taking it away from them.