Coalition on Homelessness v. City and County of San Francisco

Background

The plaintiffs are current and formerly homeless residents of San Francisco and the Coalition on Homelessness, a nonprofit advocacy organization. They challenge aspects of San Francisco’s official response to homelessness, including its coordinated effort to address homeless encampments.

On December 23, 2022, the court partially granted the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction. A preliminary injunction is a court order issued before final judgment that requires or prohibits certain conduct during the litigation. The relevant portion prohibited defendants from enforcing or threatening to enforce specified California and San Francisco laws against involuntarily homeless people for sitting, lying, or sleeping on public property. The injunction also prohibited using California Penal Code section 148(a) for those purposes. It was ordered to remain effective while San Francisco had more homeless people than available shelter beds.

The defendants appealed the preliminary injunction to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. They then moved to stay, or pause, the portion concerning laws against sitting, lying, and sleeping on public property while the appeal was pending.

Legal standard

The court applied the four-factor standard for a stay pending appeal: whether the applicant is likely to succeed on the merits, whether the applicant will suffer irreparable harm without a stay, whether a stay would substantially injure other interested parties, and where the public interest lies. The court stated that the first two factors are the most important and that the party seeking the stay bears the burden of showing that a stay is justified.

Reasons for denying the stay

The defendants argued that the challenged injunction was overbroad under Ninth Circuit decisions concerning criminal penalties for involuntarily homeless people sleeping outdoors. They contended that a person is not involuntarily homeless if San Francisco offers that person adequate temporary shelter, even if the city does not have enough shelter beds for everyone experiencing homelessness.

The court concluded that the defendants were unlikely to succeed on appeal for two reasons. First, they had not properly raised this argument before the court in the preliminary-injunction proceedings. The court said the defendants had attempted to develop the argument at the hearing rather than in their opposition brief. Their later administrative motion seeking clarification was procedurally improper, and they did not file a motion for reconsideration or another proper motion addressing the issue.

Second, the court found that the defendants had not established a factual record supporting their interpretation. In the preliminary-injunction proceedings, the court had found that San Francisco lacked enough shelter beds for all homeless San Franciscans, that people could not voluntarily access shelter beds through waitlists or same-day lines, and that encampment closures sometimes occurred without a firm or any shelter offer. The court also found that later declarations submitted by defendants did not state that city officials offer shelter to every homeless person before telling them to leave public property.

The court also found that defendants had not shown likely irreparable harm. They identified public health and safety concerns in general terms but did not provide evidence that the injunction prevented them from addressing those concerns. The court noted that defense counsel had stated that defendants continued to offer shelter and services and had been able to clean areas where encampments were located after the injunction issued. Because defendants failed to satisfy the two most important factors, the court did not stay the injunction pending appeal.

Disposition

The court denied defendants’ motion to stay. The opinion does not state that the motion was denied with or without prejudice.