A new class action complaint accuses several government entities, including the city and county of San Francisco, of discrimination through guaranteed income projects by intentional exclusion of people who don’t belong to certain groups.
The American Civil Rights Project, along with Benbrook Law Group, filed a complaint May 31 in San Francisco County Superior Court on behalf of named plaintiffs Ruth Parker, Ellen Lee Zhou and the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation. Defendants also include San Francisco Unified School District, Regents of the University of California, and state Health and Human Services Agency Secretary Mark Ghaly.
According to the complaint, the agencies participate in programs using cash payments to provide “guaranteed income” but violate the constitutional principle of equal protection because they “unlawfully choose their beneficiaries based on race, ethnicity, gender/gender identity and sexual orientation.” The complaint, which further alleged violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, also named 10 additional defendants under fictitious names and requested permission alter the filing once determining their legal identities.
The complaint further alleges the “payment schemes also discriminate unlawfully on the bases of gender/gender identity and sexual orientation. Although courts have held that the federal constitution’s equal protection guarantee is more tolerant of such classifications than it is with racial distinctions, the California Constitution treats sex and sexual orientation as ‘suspect classifications.’ ”
The San Francisco Guaranteed Income Plan for Artists launched in June 2022, according to the complaint. Through a partnership with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, participating artists would get $1,000 per month. YCBA now is known as the Creative Communities Coalition for Guaranteed Income.
The complaint said the YBCA’s website detailed a collaboration with San Francisco Mayor London Breed to “target artists in our focus populations” through “imperfect proxy indicators” like asking “artists to respond to a question asking if their artistic practice is rooted in a historically marginalized community.” The complaint said this allocation process is listed despite the prohibition on directly restricting funds based on demographics.
The same website allegedly said the program chose Native American and Native Alaskan artists at a 12.5% greater rate than those group’s share of city population. For LGBTQ and Black artists the rate was 3% greater, but for Hispanic artists the rate was 46% greater. Meanwhile only half as many Asian artists were chosen as expected based on general population while the report omits “any indicating that any of the program’s beneficiaries are white heterosexuals.”
The complaint also targeted programs like the Abundant Birth Project, which it said specifically focuses on Black mothers, the Black Economic Equity Movement, administered by University of California San Francisco and UC Berkeley, and Guaranteed Income for Transgender People, which runs through several San Francisco municipal offices.’’
Whether explicitly creating programs targeted toward racial or identity groups, or using intentional proxies, “no compelling interest supports these discriminatory giveaways,” the complaint alleged. “Indeed, defendants do not even attempt to identify an interest recognized by the United States Supreme Court as compelling.”
The complaint said the Supreme Court repeatedly asserted an attempt to address past discrimination is not a compelling interest for government action and argued the Equal Protection Clause “requires the government to identify discrimination with specificity, have actual evidence of discrimination that demonstrates race-based action is necessary, and tailor any race-conscious action to the remediation of that discrimination.”
In addition to seeking a judicial declaration the expenditures are illegal and an injunction halting the programs so long as they are discriminatory, the plaintiffs want a judge to stop the programs from using any government money to support or fund the programs as well as reimbursement for their expenses in pursuing the litigation.
Plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Bradley A. Benbrook and Stephen M. Duvernay, of the Benbrook Law Group, of Sacramento; and Daniel I Morenoff, of the American Civil Rights Project, of Dallas, Texas.