Court of Appeal issues disappointing Opinion

On November 30, 2021, the Court released its Opinion in Tos v. California High-Speed Rail Authority affirming the lower court ruling. This was a tremendous disappointment, given the ten years of litigation leading up to this moment. Here’s the background:

On December 13, 2016, the California High-Speed Rail Authority, CHSRA, met and gave preliminary approval to submit funding plans seeking $3.2 billion in HSR bond funding for the San Francisco to San Jose Peninsula Corridor project (the Caltrain Electrification project) and Central Valley HSR project. The same day, four individuals, three non-profit organizations, the Town of Atherton and Kings County filed a lawsuit, seeking a ruling that the CHSRA’s efforts to obtain construction funding not only failed to meet the statutory requirements of Proposition 1A, but were unconstitutional as well.

The case is the second Tos v. California High-Speed Rail Authority, or Tos II and the plaintiffs are John Tos, Town of Atherton, Patricia Louise Hogan-Giorni, Anthony Wynne, Community Coalition on High-Speed Rail, Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund, and California Rail Foundation.

For more information and all the legal filings, see the pages for Tos I, Part I, Tos I, Part II, Tos II, Part I and Tos II, Part II, and the many other HSR cases that go all the way back to 2008. Opponents of the HSR project have sustained an exceptional effort over many years in fighting this wasteful and ill-conceived project.

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