San Francisco can now ramp up clearings of homeless encampments after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday overturned an order that required it to first offer shelter to tenants of the encampments.
The court partially lifted a preliminary injunction against San Francisco issued Feb. 23 by Chief Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu. The injunction was based on precedent that clearing homeless encampments without providing individuals living accommodations violated their Eighth Amendment rights prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.
Monday’s reversal is the first trickle in a sea change of homelessness law to reach San Francisco. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a controversial ruling in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which broadly enabled cities to clear homelessness encampments.
The Supreme Court’s decision overturned precedent upon which the injunction against San Francisco relied. Therefore, the 9th Circuit court had to lift the injunction to bring the case into line with the Supreme Court’s decision in Grants Pass, it said in Monday’s ruling.
“(The SCOTUS) ruling will have really disastrous consequences for our street homelessness crisis,” said Nisha Kashyap, a program director for one of the law firms representing the Coalition on Homelessness in its lawsuit against San Francisco. “It is going to make homelessness worse, if cities take the Supreme Court up on its invitation to criminalize homelessness.”
Sweeping away obstacles
San Francisco seems poised to take up that invitation. Monday’s ruling represents a win for San Francisco leaders, who have sought to crack down on visible homelessness, particularly as the city becomes increasingly linked with it in the national eye.
“San Francisco’s street homelessness response has been operating under court ruling,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. “Now, with (the Grants Pass) ruling, many of the court restrictions in place will be lifted likely by the end of the month.”
Breed said that penalties enabled by the ruling will be directed toward homeless people who continuously refuse outreach services.
“This doesn’t mean that we are going to stop leading with services, that we’re going to just walk up to people and immediately focus on trying to push for penalties,” Breed said. “But it does mean we can be firmer in saying that if you refuse services time and time and time and time again, you cannot stay where you are.”
“This doesn’t mean that we are going to stop leading with services … But it does mean we can be firmer in saying that if you refuse services … you cannot stay where you are.”
Mayor London Breed
However, lawyers for Coalition on Homelessness said that the reversal shouldn’t change much in the short term, since San Francisco’s laws already require it to offer shelter before clearing encampments. Kashyap said the injunction was simply another layer of protection. But she alleges that the city has been ignoring its own laws — and the injunction when it was in effect — and has been sweeping encampments without offering shelter anyway.
“I think the injunction itself was important, but it wasn’t perfect,” Kashyap said. “And that’s part of the reason why we remain very concerned about whether San Francisco is going to continue to follow its own policies.”
Litigation continues
However, Monday’s ruling is not the end of the line for the lawsuit. Even as the court lifted the section of the injunction that related to the Eighth Amendment, it upheld another section that required San Francisco to follow its own policy to store items seized during raids on homeless encampments.
Further, the American Civil Liberties Union contends that numerous other claims in the lawsuit aren’t affected by the Grants Pass decision. And Kashyap said that lawyers for Coalition on Homelessness expect to win on these other claims.
“The Grants Pass case did not address the city’s pattern of destroying property, its failure to provide accommodations for people with disabilities, nor whether the methods used to clear encampments unlawfully endanger people’s lives,” the ACLU said in a June 28 statement. “These claims remain unresolved and will be at issue when the case goes to trial in May 2025.”
The post San Francisco can resume homeless sweeps as appeals court partially removes injunction appeared first on Local News Matters.