Top California university may have to slash admissions after neighborhood group complains

The conflict is the latest highlighting key debates on affordable housing and education equality in the state

The University of California, Berkeley may have to slash its new admissions by about one-third after a neighborhood group in the hilly Bay Area city challenged the environmental impact of the top college's expansion plan.

The university is asking California's supreme court to intervene after the local group, called Save Berkeley's Neighborhoods, successfully argued the university was violating a major environmental law by failing to account for increases in the trash, traffic and noise that increased enrollment and new construction would bring.