OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) — A federal judge will decide whether San Francisco can avoid producing evidence of how it handles removing homeless people from city streets while awaiting the Supreme Court’s opinion on a different case on the constitutional rights of those people.
San Francisco’s battle with a coalition of homeless people who say the city’s ban on resting on public streets violates their civil rights arrived back in federal court Thursday, after a Ninth Circuit panel affirmed the federal judge’s preliminary injunction.
The class action addresses the civil rights of homeless people, and challenges how cities can enforce bans on camping on public property in a state with some of the highest homeless populations in the country.
The city filed Jan. 17 for a stay on the litigation in federal court. In arguments before U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu in Oakland on Thursday, attorneys said the case depends on a ruling in Johnson v. Grants Pass, which revolves around whether cities are violating the Eighth Amendment by punishing homeless people for sleeping on public lands. The Supreme Court in January agreed to hear the case.
San Francisco officials say that a ruling in Grants Pass will determine how the city handles the property of homeless people, claims from the plaintiffs that the removals violate due process rights — the requirement to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities — and whether sweeps of encampments unlawfully endanger people’s lives.
They asked that Ryu stay all deadlines until 30 days after the Supreme Court settles Grants Pass, to avoid officials spending many hours producing hundreds of thousands “of potentially irrelevant pages of records” and defending “against possibly futile dispositive motions.”
But the plaintiffs say that irrespective of the Supreme Court’s ruling, 12 other federal and state claims challenging San Francisco’s policies must be resolved.
Nisha Kashyap, senior staff attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights representing the plaintiffs, said ahead of the hearing: “Unhoused people should not continue to be subject to these unlawful practices, and the entire community deserves a timely resolution to all the important issues at stake in the case.”
John Do, senior attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, said that much of the federal case is different from Grants Pass.
“The Supreme Court can and should affirm that the government can’t jail you based on your status, who you are, or a condition you have. The case can proceed and take into account any future Supreme Court ruling,” Do said.
In court Thursday, Ryu said she needs certainty that city officials will not ask for another stay in July following a ruling in Grants Pass. She said that both sides expressed “extreme” views in their filings, which she did not find convincing.
Kashyap said that discovery for evidence about San Francisco Police Department and San Francisco Department of Public Works activity when moving homeless people will remain relevant to the plaintiffs' claims.
“The way the city handles the property of homeless people is very much intermeshed and interwoven with the way the city handles the actual presence of homeless people,” she said.
The city's attorney John George said its position is that state law does not allow for the full breadth of the plaintiffs’ claims.
“It’s very difficult to know who we oppose and split time on the various issues, because we view them as quite disparate,” he said. “If the Eighth Amendment drops out, then I won’t spend a lot of time asking people if they are voluntarily homeless. It won’t be salient to the claims.”
Ryu did not indicate how or when she will rule.
The judge ruled in 2022 that San Francisco officials cannot enforce "sit/lie" public sleeping laws against involuntarily homeless individuals — people who do not have access to shelter or permanent housing. The city appealed her injunction, saying the order was so vague it interfered with officials’ ability to enforce other laws on homelessness.
The split Ninth Circuit panel affirmed Jan. 11 that Ryu did not abuse the court's discretion by requiring the city to comply with its “bag and tag” policy for removing people’s property from streets. The panel rebuffed officials' argument distinguishing San Francisco’s ordinances from those cited in the landmark case Martin v. Boise, which bars cities without enough shelter beds from moving homeless people, because the city allows people to sleep in public during certain hours.
Ryu must clarify if the preliminary injunction applies only to the city’s enforcement of laws against those who are found to be involuntarily homeless, and whether that action was appropriate since its ordinance can't be enforced without contacting each person to give them shelter options before removing personal belongings.
Follow @nhanson_reports
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
-
96 hours of work April 15, 2024
-
-
Courts and churches April 15, 2024