Court Lifts Restrictions on SF Encampment Sweeps

A federal appeals court on Monday granted San Francisco greater freedom to sweep homeless encampments. The decision comes after last month’s Supreme Court ruling expanded cities’ power to police homelessness.

In December 2022, U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu ordered an injunction barring San Francisco from enforcing laws against public camping without first offering a shelter bed — part of the ongoing lawsuit against the city over its homelessness policies.

The injunction relied on Ninth Circuit rulings that found punishing unhoused people for sleeping on public property when shelter beds aren’t available violates the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court overturned those rulings, and the Ninth Circuit has now ordered Ryu to vacate the portion of her injunction that leaned on them.

The court kept a requirement that the city follow its “bag and tag” policies governing how unhoused people’s belongings are handled and stored.

“We appreciate that the Ninth Circuit panel took quick action to ensure the preliminary injunction in San Francisco is in line with the Supreme Court’s decision in Grants Pass,” City Attorney David Chiu said in a statement. He noted that the decision will help officials deal with the “most challenging” encampments in the city “where services are often refused and re-encampment is common.”

Last year, the Ninth Circuit denied San Francisco’s appeal but clarified that the injunction did not apply to unhoused people who declined offers of shelter.

Despite the restrictions, the city conducted more sweeps in 2023 than the year before and saw a 17% reduction in tents.

Now, lawyers for the unhoused residents and advocates who filed suit say they’ll closely watch how the city responds.

“If the city follows its own policies, we should continue to see offers of shelter prior to any kind of enforcement,” said Nisha Kashyap, an attorney with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of San Francisco, who’s involved in the suit. “Now, our clients brought this lawsuit because there was a gap between what the city said it was doing and what it actually was doing.”

Kashyap maintains the Supreme Court decision will not derail their case, emphasizing that only one of the 13 claims in the lawsuit will be impacted. The suit accuses the city of violating unhoused residents’ rights by destroying their property and failing to provide shelter accommodations appropriate for people with disabilities.

Mayor London Breed and Chiu have said they’re working to adjust city policies to reflect the Supreme Court ruling.