Across California, only 15 petitions were filed in the first week of the new program, according to statistics released by the Judicial Council of California on Friday. San Diego’s total was the highest. Orange County was next in line with four petitions, and Riverside saw three. A single petition was filed in both San Francisco and Tuolumne counties, and no petitions were filed in the counties of Glenn and Stanislaus.

(Subscription required) The “Yes in God’s Back Yard,” or YIGBY, law gives “use by right” status to new affordable housing on land owned by churches and higher education institutions. “Use by right” exempts institutions from conditional use permits and some other requirements. It also declares this kind of development is “not a project” for the purposes of the California Environmental Quality Act, making it much harder for opponents to use the courts to derail new housing.

The ongoing legal battle over the Betabel Road commercial project is in a holding pattern as attorneys for the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and the Center for Biological Diversity wait for their appeals to be decided by the state’s Sixth District Court of Appeals.

Div. Three of the First District Court of Appeal, acting on its own motion, has taken the rare step of declaring a serial appellant, who repeatedly loses, to be a vexatious litigant, requiring the woman—a disbarred attorney—to gain permission of the presiding judge of a superior court to file a lawsuit or consent of a presiding justice of a court of appeal to file an appeal, when acting in pro per.