In denying the request for a stay while the injunction is under appeal, U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu called out a legal gambit by city lawyers who, in their haste to appeal, disregarded her earlier advice about the proper procedure for raising their challenge to the injunction.
Ryu used the city's legal strategy to support her conclusion that the city had little likelihood of success on its appeal of the preliminary injunction. She also found the city had not shown that it would be "irreparably injured" if the injunction remains in place.
The decision, and in particular her focus on the city's legal maneuvering, seems likely to complicate the city's chances of reversing the prohibition on sweeps in the near term.
The controversy is in a high-profile case brought against the city by the advocacy group Coalition on Homelessness and a number of individual plaintiffs, some of them unsheltered people living on city streets.
The plaintiffs argued that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments means that the city can't punish a person for sleeping on city streets while there is a shortfall of available shelter beds.
If the appeals court does not intervene, the sweep injunction will likely remain in place until a full trial in the case before Ryu. That trial is currently scheduled for April 3, 2024.
