Coalition on Homelessness v. City and County of San Francisco

On September 27, 2022, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area and the ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed suit on behalf of the Coalition on Homelessness and several unhoused individuals against the City and County of San Francisco and Mayor London Breed for their efforts to criminalize homelessness through an array of practices that violated the constitutional rights of unhoused San Franciscans. The plaintiffs also sought a preliminary injunction to stop these practices on an emergency basis.

For years, San Francisco has claimed that it is taking steps to address the City’s homelessness crisis. But in fact, the City is forcing unhoused people out of sight—destroying their survival belongings and citing and arresting them for sleeping in public when they have no shelter to go to. San Francisco has more laws penalizing homelessness than any other city in California. These regressive mass incarceration era policies only perpetuate San Francisco’s homelessness crisis and scapegoat unhoused people for the City’s egregious failure to support affordable housing for San Francisco residents.

On December 23, 2022, a federal judge in the Northern District Court of California granted an emergency order in the lawsuit. The order prohibited the City from enforcing practices that violated the civil rights of unhoused San Franciscans. Additionally, the order stopped the City from seizing and destroying unhoused people’s survival gear and personal property. In granting the order, the Court also acknowledged that the City’s cruel policies have made it harder for people to exit homelessness. The order was upheld by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a separate case that criminalizing homelessness without offering shelter was not "cruel and unusual punishment" in violation of the U.S. Constitution. That ruling prevented the plaintiffs from pursuing similar claims in this case. But it did not affect the plaintiffs' remaining claims, which focus on the City's unlawful destruction of the personal property of unhoused persons in the course of "sweeps" of homeless encampments. Those claims have survived numerous motions for dismissal by the City.

During the course of discovery, plaintiffs have uncovered evidence detailing the pervasiveness of the City's conduct and the extent to which its destruction of unhoused people's personal property is the intended consequence of the City's policies. Plaintiffs' property destruction claims are headed to trial during the summer of 2025.