(CN) - San Francisco failed to avoid a trial over claims that it violated the constitutional rights of homeless people by seizing and destroying their personal possessions during sweeps of encampments on the city's public property.
Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu on Thursday denied the city's request for summary judgment in the lawsuit brought by the Coalition on Homelessness and individual unhoused people. The case is set for a bench trial next month before the judge in Oakland, California, federal court.
The judge's reasoning echoed that of a ruling she had issued just Monday, on the city's separate motion to dismiss some of the claims in the most recent reiteration of the lawsuit. In that decision, Ryu found that the San Francisco-based nonprofit advocacy group was entitled to bring claims against the city on behalf of its homeless members - a concept known as "associational standing."
"The evidence demonstrates that even though coalition has an informal and amorphous membership structure, it in fact has members, activities, and people working toward common organizational goals, and the 'primary beneficiaries' of its work and this litigation are the legions of unhoused San Franciscans, whether those individuals are members or not," Ryu said in Thursday's decision.
As such, the judge said, the trial will not require the participation of individual members of the coalition instead of the coalition itself.
Likewise, the judge rejected the city's argument that the two individual plaintiffs still in the case - Sarah Cronk and Joshua Donohoe, a homeless couple who have lived together on the streets of San Francisco - had standing to proceed to trial and seek a permanent injunction against the city even if they were living in subsidized housing as of last year.
"Cronk and Donohoe's evidence about the city's repeated seizures of their property, combined with the testimony of others regarding similar and recent incidents, the testimony of city workers, and the expert opinions," Ryu said, provides evidentiary support for their standing to seek injunctive relief.
"A reasonable fact finder could determine that this body of evidence demonstrates that Cronk and Donohoe are realistically threatened by a repetition that is part of a pattern of officially sanctioned behavior, violative of their federal rights," the judge added.
In the case of a bench trial, the judge herself will be the "fact finder" rather than a jury.
The plaintiffs' evidence, which must be taken as true, was sufficient to demonstrate that their claims aren't moot, according to Ryu's decision, because their current sheltered status may turn out to be temporary and they could end up living on the streets again and be subjected to the city's challenged practices.
Representatives of the San Francisco City Attorney's Office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment after regular business hours.
The homeless plaintiffs claim that San Francisco violated their Fourth and 14th Amendment rights by failing to invest in affordable housing and destroying the property of homeless people in an effort to hide evidence of the city's homeless problem.
The coalition argues that many of its members have been personally impacted by the sweeps, which have resulted in citations, arrests, law enforcement threats and property destruction while living unsheltered in San Francisco. It further claims that the city and county have illegally seized its members' phones, medication, identification, medical devices, mobility aids, tools, tents and shelters, clothing, vital records and many other personal property items.
The plaintiffs seek a permanent injunction preventing San Francisco from seizing and disposing of homeless individuals' property and a court order compelling the county and city to properly train their staff so that any future seizures respect their constitutional rights.
At a hearing last month on the city's motion for summary judgment, San Francisco called the plaintiffs' standing claims "attenuated" and "speculative," arguing that to claim standing for its members, the coalition must identify many more than the two individual plaintiffs who remain attached to its complaint.
Source: Courthouse News Service
