San Francisco officials are appealing a preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge in December that prevents the city and county from conducting sweeps of homeless encampments.
San Francisco’s appeal to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Jan. 23 came as a result of a civil lawsuit filed by the nonprofit Coalition on Homelessness and individual homeless people that alleged the sweeps violated their Eighth and 14th Amendment rights. On Dec. 23, federal Magistrate Donna Ryu declined to dismiss the lawsuit after the city moved to have the cases dismissed against individually named defendants, including Mayor London Breed and Healthy Streets Operations Center Sam Dodge.
“Defendants are preliminary enjoined from enforcing or threatening to enforce … (these) laws and ordinances to prohibit involuntarily homeless individuals from sitting, lying or sleeping on public property,” Ryu wrote in her December opinion.
Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu
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A spokeswoman for the City Attorney’s Office said San Francisco officials have been complying with the injunction.
“We are pleased that the cases against the individual defendants, including Mayor Breed, have been dismissed and that the court denied (the) plaintiffs’ motion which alleged that the injunction had been violated,” spokeswoman Jen Kwart told the Northern California Record in an email.
The city also emphasized that they had submitted evidence rebutting the plaintiffs’ contention that their personal property had been seized and destroyed during sweeps and that their constitutional rights had been violated by the city imposing penalties on them for “the involuntary act of sleeping outside.”
“Dedicated and talented city workers are providing vital services and shelter, a lifeline to people living on the street who are most in need,” Kwart said. “Between the court’s order on Dec. 23 and Jan. 6, San Francisco connected 410 people voluntarily to shelter and provided a range of health services, information and referrals.”
The city had sought clarification of the judge’s preliminary injunction in mid-January, but that request was denied, prompting the city’s appeal to the Ninth Circuit.