Amid Supreme Court case, SF makes another request to stay homeless sweeps ruling
SAN FRANCISCO – On Thursday, San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu's office filed papers that, once again, seek to put on ice litigation brought against the city in 2022 by the Coalition on Homelessness.
The city's earlier attempts have been largely unsuccessful, but Chiu is betting that the tables have changed since Jan. 12 when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review Grants Pass v. Johnson, another case that involves a key question about the power of cities to clear homeless encampments.
The city's latest stay request comes in the highly publicized case pending before U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
In December 2022, Ryu enjoined San Francisco from enforcing its public camping and sleeping laws against individuals who were "involuntarily homeless."
Ryu based parts of her decision on Grants Pass and an earlier case, Martin v. City of Boise. In both cases, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit (the same circuit in which Ryu's court is based) said that punishing people for violating such laws was unconstitutionally "cruel and unusual" if the people had no practical alternative.
The plaintiffs in the case before Ryu asserted that San Francisco was routinely clearing encampments without a realistic alternative for the residents.
The city sharply contested that allegation. According to its narrative, the city always offers displaced people shelter before enforcing the laws against public camping or sleeping.
After her review of the extensive affidavits and declarations submitted by the parties, Ryu sided with the plaintiffs, noting that more than 4,000 people were living in the city without shelter—in tent encampments or cars or abandoned buildings—and the city's shelter system was essentially closed. Thus, people displaced did not have a realistic place to go.
Ryu entered her injunction on Dec. 23, 2022. The injunction was "preliminary" because it was to remain in place only pending a full trial, which was subsequently scheduled for April 2024.
Almost immediately, the city filed an "administrative motion" to clarify that the preliminary injunction should be read to mean that the city could clear encampments if it made offers of shelter to those who were displaced, even if there were thousands of others citywide without shelter.
Ryu denied the city's motion, not on the merits but because the procedure the city used to raise the issue was inappropriate. She invited the city to file its motion in a procedurally proper way, but instead the city appealed her injunction to the 9th Circuit.
Thereafter, In February 2023, the city returned to Ryu, now asking that her preliminary injunction be suspended while the appeal was pending. Ryu denied that motion on April 3, 2023.
Next, the city filed a motion with the 9th Circuit asking for that court to suspend Ryu's preliminary injunction until the appeal was decided. However, despite the best efforts of the city attorney, the stay motion did not get a quick hearing in the 9th Circuit and the preliminary injunction remained in place.
Not until Sept. 5 did the appeals court finally address the city's request for a stay and, when it did, it decided to leave the injunction in place pending further order, when it resolved the appeal.
The second shoe dropped four months later. On Jan. 11, the appeals court ruled on the appeal. While the 9th Circuit ordered Ryu to consider several specific issues raised by the city, it denied the city's appeal and left the preliminary injunction in place.
The 9th Circuit decision returned the case to Ryu's court, where it looked like the parties would shoulder the burden of preparing for a full-blown trial in the spring.
But then the city was thrown a lifeline.
The city of Grants Pass had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to agree to accept its case for review. The Grants Pass case, like the case before Ryu, was rooted in the idea that punishing a person for public camping was cruel and unusual when there was no realistic alternative.
On Jan. 12, the high court agreed to hear the case. Chiu jumped on that development.
On Thursday, his office filed a new motion asking Ryu to put her case into suspense until the Supreme Court rules in the Grants Pass case.
The city argued that the doctrine on which Grants Pass is based is foundational support for Ryu's preliminary injunction, and therefore there is no reason to spend the time and effort to press the litigation forward while the appeal is pending.
The motion claims that suspending the case will "ensure that neither the parties nor the Court spend the next several months—which are going to be the most intensive period in the case—litigating under an uncertain legal framework and potentially wasting a huge amount of public resources chasing issues that may turn out to be wholly irrelevant."
The city acknowledged that if the stay were to be granted, Ryu's preliminary injunction would remain in place. Thus, it argued that there would be no hardship to the plaintiffs.
The plaintiffs have not yet filed a formal response to the city's motion, but their lawyers immediately issued a press release saying that they intended to oppose the city's request, pointing out that the constitutional issue in Grants Pass was but one of many issues raised in the San Francisco litigation, including, "the City's destruction of property and ignoring due process rights, the City's failure to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities, whether the City discriminates against people with disabilities, and whether sweeps unlawfully endanger people's lives."
Ryu is likely to rule on the city's request in the next several weeks.
The Supreme Court is expected to decide the Grants Pass case before June 30, the end of its current term.