Bonta, San Pasqual tribe sue Poway over handling of Kumeyaay remains found at construction site

Two new lawsuits by the state and a Kumeyaay tribe accuse Poway of violating environmental law in letting construction proceed on a housing development where Native American remains and artifacts have been found.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta and the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians - the most likely descendants of the people who once lived there - sued Monday over the city’s response to the recent discoveries at the site of the Hidden Valley Ranch project being built by developer Shea Homes.

Both lawsuits allege that the city failed to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, following repeat discoveries of human bones and other Indigenous artifacts since October. They argue the city should have halted work and conducted a new environmental review of the site.

The city’s environmental review of the long-planned project was adopted back in 2003. Since then, multiple state laws have been enacted requiring greater consultation with tribes on such projects and environmental review.

After the finds in October, the city said it halted work in the immediate vicinity.

But the San Pasqual have asked the city to go further, halt work on the entire site and consult with them on how to repatriate the remains and artifacts - a process outlined in federal law.

The city has said it can’t halt work on the entire site because the developer is complying with city-issued permits.

The new lawsuits argue the city should have insisted on more review, and they say it didn’t disclose considerable discoveries of Indigenous cultural resources at the site between 2003 and when work began last year.

“Despite the repeated and extraordinary discoveries on the site, the city did not require additional analysis or conduct any further CEQA review when it issued multiple subsequent discretionary approvals,” Bonta’s lawsuit alleges.

“Instead, the city improperly abdicated its role to analyze the newfound resources and develop enforceable mitigation measures for the significant discoveries, deferring to a voluntary and unenforceable plan adopted unilaterally by Shea Homes on Oct. 24, 2025,” the suit goes on to say.

The tribe says in its lawsuit that the recent archaeological finds suggest that parts of the site are "a tribal funerary complex - a sacred landscape where the Tribe's ancestors were laid to rest alongside their grave goods, and where extensive funerary and burial rites were practiced for millennia."

It also notes that Kumeyaay burial practices generally involved cremation, which suggests the jawbone found last month, intentionally placed under a metate, belonged to "a person of particular importance to the Kumeyaay people."

Poway spokesperson Rene Carmichael said in an email that the city was “blindsided” by the state’s lawsuit, and that city officials had previously been working with the attorney general on how to handle the situation.

“With no opportunity to understand or potentially cure any violations of CEQA, the city received no indication that a CEQA violation was being pursued,” she said. “The City of Poway takes this issue seriously and is confident it has complied with all applicable laws within its purview, including CEQA.”

The San Pasqual tribe notified the city that they planned to sue last week.

In a statement, Shea Homes said it has complied with state and federal regulations for the protection of Indigenous artifacts and remains.

“We take these obligations seriously and categorically reject any claims or statements to the contrary,” said spokesperson Jan Percival.

Bonta and the San Pasqual tribe say they’re not trying to stop the project entirely but rather want Poway and Shea Homes to comply with the law.

“As we pursue these aims, San Pasqual is committed to fulfilling our sacred duties to our ancestors and to finding a fair and reasonable resolution for all parties,” said Steve Cope, the San Pasqual tribal chairman, in a joint statement with the attorney general.

The tribe’s frustration with the development kicked off in October, when crews first found the remains of a child as well as metates, ancient grinding stones, on the site.

By March, crews found the mandible of an adult man, followed within days by the ribs of a young adult.

A different local Kumeyaay tribe, the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians, was hired by Shea Homes to monitor the site. But the San Pasqual became involved due to their designation as the most likely descendants of the site’s former inhabitants.

In December, Shea Homes sent a cease-and-desist letter to the San Pasqual as they became more involved in responding to the development.

In the city’s 2003 environmental review, an archaeological consultant, Brian F. Smith, recovered hundreds of Native American artifacts, including about 10 grams of bone.

At the time, Smith said the site’s cultural significance could be mitigated by collecting subsurface deposits for lab analysis, according to the environmental review.

Since then, the attorney general and tribe say continued archaeological work on the site - conducted without tribal consultation - unearthed 8,000 tribal cultural resources, including hundreds of pottery fragments, semiprecious stones, carved bone and arrowheads.

“The public was never notified of the significance of those findings, which greatly exceeded the findings that were anticipated in 2003,” the attorney general’s lawsuit says.

The tribe’s lawsuit also argues that Poway’s environmental review did not properly mitigate for the presence of human remains.

“The archaeological work failed to identify the funerary nature of this site,” it alleges.

The city contends it did properly mitigate the site.

Bonta’s lawsuit is asking a judge to block construction for now. He also wants the court to force Poway to vacate its past approvals for the project, to comply with CEQA and its own archaeological guidelines, and to refrain from granting the project any other approvals until it’s fully CEQA-compliant.

The San Pasqual also want the court to order the city to meaningfully consult with them on the project, to develop new mitigation measures that preserve ancestral burial artifacts and to assess the project’s impacts on remains and other cultural resources, "many of which the tribe knows remain undisturbed."

To Johnny Bear Contreras, the San Pasqual cultural committee chair who previously raised concerns about the impact of construction, the litigation appeared to mark a hopeful step.

“I am grateful our Ancestors are being heard and that San Pasqual can help set precedent for other California Tribal Nations on educating lead agencies regarding truly meaningful tribal consultation under the law,” he said in a statement.

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This story was originally published April 21, 2026 at 6:58 PM.