The ruling, while dismissing many of their claims, allows the case to proceed to trial on the claims that the city violated the due process rights of homeless people by unlawfully seizing and destroying their personal property.
(CN) — A federal judge on Wednesday trimmed a constitutional rights lawsuit by former and current homeless people, as well as a nonprofit advocacy organization, against San Francisco for removing them and their property from city streets without warning and but allowed some of their due process claims to proceed to trial.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu in Oakland agreed to dismiss the claims brought under the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and under the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures without probable cause.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s City of Grants Pass v. Johnson decision earlier this year — which found a city ban on public camping was constitutional — put the federal questions beyond debate, the judge said, in dismissing those claims without giving the plaintiffs an opportunity to try to fix them. Ryu also dismissed the similar claims brought under the California Constitution but allowed the plaintiffs the possibility to amend them.
The Coalition on Homelessness and the other plaintiffs hadn’t disputed that these claims should be dismissed, according to the judge’s order, but had argued that the the dismissal shouldn’t be a ruling on the merits that would prejudice their ability to bring them in state court or in federal court if the law changes.
The judge also agreed with San Francisco that some additional claims — including for exposure to state-created danger in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment — should be dismissed to the extent these claims relied on a theory of liability foreclosed by City of Grants Pass.
However, Ryu determined that the homeless plaintiffs’ claims that the city violated their due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment and the California Constitution by improperly seizing and destroying their personal property weren’t barred by the high court’s decision.
The judge also rejected San Francisco’s argument that Coalition on Homelessness lacks “associational standing” to bring those claims.
“It is ‘relatively clear, rather than merely speculative,’ that one or more of coalition’s members have been and will be adversely affected by San Francisco’s alleged unlawful seizure and destruction of homeless individuals’ personal property,” Ryu wrote. “The city does not need — nor does it argue it needs — to know the identity of the allegedly harmed coalition members to understand and respond to the [second amended complaint].”
On the other hand, the judge concluded that neither the organization nor the individual named plaintiffs had standing to pursue claims for the sweeps, either under federal law or California law, for exposure to state-created danger and disability discrimination.
The complaint failed to argue, the judge said, that either the coalition or an individual suffered injuries “resulting from the city’s challenged conduct that created or exposed them to an actual, particularized danger they would not otherwise have faced.”
“Plaintiffs offer no authority recognizing that a state-created danger claim may be based on the risk of future harm, as opposed to an actual injury caused by a defendant’s actions,” Ryu wrote.
The judge did, however, reject San Francisco’s bid for summary judgment, which would have allowed the city to dodge trial on the surviving claims, including the claims for municipal liability.
The plaintiffs’ “allegations support a reasonable inference that the city’s failure to properly train its employees regarding homeless individuals’ personal property amounts to deliberate indifference to their constitutional rights, and that the injuries alleged in the [second amended complaint] would have been avoided had the municipality properly trained its officers,” the judge said.
John Do, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who represents the plaintiffs, said they were pleased that they could proceed with their lawsuit to seek a permanent injunction to prevent San Francisco from illegally seizing and destroying people’s belongings as it has in the past.
“At the end of the day, this case has always been about making the city abide by its own policies and the law,” Do said in a telephone interview.
San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said he appreciated the judge’s order, noting that the majority of the claims against the city were dismissed.
“All of the individual plaintiffs in this matter are currently housed and have been for most of this lawsuit,” said Chiu said in a statement. “These folks were not harmed by the city, and the risk of future harm is extremely remote since there are no time restrictions on their housing placements.”
The lawsuit was placed on hold last spring, when the Supreme Court took up the case Grants Pass v. Johnson. Following the high court’s June decree that cities can enforce anti-camping ordinances as they do not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, a Ninth Circuit panel vacated part of Ryu’s injunction pertaining to such claims.
The panel kept alive Ryu’s preliminary injunction relating to the plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment claims, which requires the city to comply with its own “bag and tag” policy. That policy dictates how and when workers may collect and store personal belongings taken from encampments and when property can be destroyed.
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