A pair of Santa Barbara County siblings filed a lawsuit in federal court this week that challenges a 2024 California law banning new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet of homes, schools, hospitals, and other locations.
Attorneys for John and Melinda Morgan, who inherited the mineral rights to two parcels of land within the oil-rich Cat Canyon Field, argue the law amounts to an unconstitutional taking of their property. The parcels are situated near residences and within one of the many “Health Protection Zones” created by Senate Bill 1137. “Environmental protection doesn’t give the government a blank check to take private property without paying for it,” said Paige Gilliard, an attorney with the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation.
The Morgans hail from a family of Southern California oil drillers and had intended to dig new wells in Cat Canyon “to obtain royalty payments to support themselves in retirement,” the lawsuit states. They also had hoped to pass on the mineral rights to their children. “This desire to use natural resources on one’s own private property for the benefit of future generations drove early settlers to America, early Americans to expand the nation westward, and lies at the very heart of the American Dream,” it says…