OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) — A federal judge advanced civil rights claims against the city of Berkeley by a class of disabled homeless people who say the city violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Constitution when it cleared a large homeless encampment and destroyed their property.
The plaintiffs, seven homeless individuals and the homeless advocacy organization Where Do We Go Berkeley, claim that throughout the city's abatements and treatment of disabled unhoused persons, the city has violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure, the Fair Housing Act, the Eighth Amendment, and the plaintiffs’ due process rights by placing them in a state-created danger.
In his 53-page order issued late Tuesday, U.S. Senior District Judge Edward Chen, a Barack Obama appointee, found the plaintiffs had adequately shown the city regularly destroys their property, ranging from personal belongings to RVs, without due process.
“The city has a pattern of destroying plaintiffs and class members’ property during abatements and closures, even when faced with individuals making legitimate claims of possessory interest in the property and protesting its seizure and destruction. On some occasions, the items being destroyed are mobility devices like wheelchairs, walkers, crutches, and medication,” Chen wrote. “The city does not provide class members subject to abatement or encampment closures a meaningful opportunity to identify and preserve their property. The city’s practice is to arrive early in the morning with a backhoe to destroy encampment residents’ possessions, without first identifying in advance who is there, whether they have alternative shelter to go to, what property they have, and where it will be stored.”
Chen found the city’s conduct violates the Fourth and 14th Amendment rights of the plaintiffs. In the case of Rufus White Jr., a disabled plaintiff who lived at the encampment. Chen noted the city has seized his property four different times, one time leaving him with no pants and only his wheelchair. White spent the next several nights without shelter.
“Here, the city did not have a warrant and it did not identify that Mr. Rufus White Jr.’s property was a public safety and/or health risk or was abandoned. The city took and destroyed Mr. Rufus White Jr.’s property without providing him the opportunity to reclaim it before it was destroyed,” Chen wrote.
Chen found this treatment of the plaintiffs “constitutionally problematic.”
“It is unreasonable for the city to take and destroy property without providing plaintiffs an opportunity to reclaim it,” Chen wrote.
As for the seizure of vehicles, Chen found the city had failed to offer a valid reason that they seized and destroyed some of the plaintiffs' RVs. The city claimed the vehicles were not street legal and that the plaintiffs had acknowledged this, though some plaintiffs say they did not.
The city has the burden to establish that the taking of vehicles was warranted on a fact-specific basis, which it has failed to do, Chen found. Moreover, the city has the burden to prove the vehicles they impounded were “impeding traffic or threatening public safety and convenience",” which it had also not shown" and has not.
“Even if the city can show that the initial seizure fell under the community caretaking exception because the cars lacked proper registration, there is nothing to suggest that the city was permitted to then ‘crush’ the vehicles, permanently depriving plaintiffs of their property,” Chen wrote.
Finally, Chen found the city exposed the plaintiffs to a state-created danger because the seizures deprived them of survival gear such as warm clothing, tents, medication, wheelchairs, canes, eyeglasses and more.
“When plaintiffs’ shelter and personal belongings are destroyed, and they have no safe shelter alternative nor means to protect themselves from the elements, the state has made plaintiffs' conditions worse,” Chen wrote, denying a large swath of the city's motion to dismiss the suit.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs did not respond to requests for comment before publication. Berkeley's attorney Marc Shapp declined to comment.
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