by Katy Grimes, E&E Legal Senior Media Fellow and California Globe Editor
As Appearing in the California Globe
If the state can take one kind of property without compensation, it can target others
NARO-California, of the National Association of Royalty Owners, together with Pacific Legal Foundation announced Wednesday they filed a federal lawsuit challenging Senate Bill 1137, the 3,200-foot oil setback mandate that they argue violates the constitutional rights of oil and gas mineral and royalty owners.
According to NARO-CA and Pacific Legal Foundation, SB 1137 amounts to an uncompensated taking of private property in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution.
Senate Bill 1137, which took effect on June 27, 2024, bans the construction of new oil wells and the maintenance or repair of existing wells within 3,200 feet of loosely defined “sensitive receptors,” potentially threatening to shut down energy resource infrastructure statewide, Hector Barajas reported for the Globe in April. SB 1137 was pushed through the California State Legislature in the final days of session in 2022 with little public debate or review.
The bill was also pushed through without any scientific basis to support it. None of the so-called studies the State Legislature pointed to as supporting the bill show that being within 3,200 feet of a well is harmful to a person’s health. The State Legislature slap-dash job here, one of the studies it tried to rely on was written after SB 1137 was adopted.
