Bakersfield City Council to consider repealing backyard hen ordinances

The Bakersfield City Council will soon consider repealing a series of ordinances that allow most homeowners to raise hens in their backyards.

In a secret 6-1 vote in closed session on Wednesday, councilmembers decided to reconsider their September decision allowing hens to be raised in many single-family properties across Bakersfield.

The council initially voted 4-3 in favor of backyard hens, but a lawsuit by an anonymous group of citizens calling themselves the Citizens for the Preservation of R-1 Zones prompted the city to place a temporary restraining order on the ordinances before they went into effect.

Now, with two new members, the council could change its mind on whether local homeowners can raise chickens in their backyards. On Wednesday, supporters of backyard hens pushed back against the possibility that the city could take away what it already approved.

“The backyard hen community will not accept a rescinding of the ordinance due to a frivolous lawsuit from an unidentified small group that has no history of environmental concern,” MT Merickel said during the meeting. “It is obvious what this lawsuit is really about, which is control and power from people who are scared and failed to get what they want.”

In the lawsuit, the anonymous group claims the city violated the California Environmental Quality Act when it passed the hen ordinances. A key argument of the lawsuit is that the city did not consider potential environmental impacts like odor, diseases and noise the lawsuit claims backyard hens could bring to the city.

When it passed the ordinances, the city did so by arguing the action was exempt from CEQA, something other cities with hen ordinances have also done.

Still, the lawsuit would challenge that assumption. However, if the city repeals the hen ordinances, the argument would be a moot point.