Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_19-cv-01709/USCOURTS-cand-3_19-cv-01709-1/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 42:1983 Civil Rights Act

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United States District Court

Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

BRENT SHIPP, et al.,

Plaintiffs,

v.

LIBBY SCHAAF, et al.,

Defendants.

Case No. 19-cv-01709-JST 

ORDER RE: MOTION FOR

PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

Re: ECF No. 7

Before the Court is Plaintiffs Brent Shipp and Eric De Guzman’s motion for a preliminary 

injunction. ECF No. 7. The Court will deny the motion.

I. BACKGROUND

The City of Oakland has enacted ordinances recognizing “that a shelter crisis exists due to 

a ‘significant number of persons . . . without the ability to obtain shelter, resulting in a threat to 

their health and safety.’” ECF No. 1-2 (February 13, 2019 memo from City Council President 

Rebecca Kaplan) at 1. As part of its response to this crisis, the City’s Public Works Department 

has a Standard Operating Procedure (“S.O.P.”) regarding the removal of homeless encampments 

from public rights-of-way, parks, and City-owned property. ECF No. 1-2 at 10. The S.O.P. 

contemplates that sometimes the belongings of occupants will be removed when encampments are 

cleared, and states that the S.O.P.’s “guidelines must be followed to protect the constitutional 

rights of persons whose personal property remains at these locations.” Id. As relevant here, the 

required procedures include the following:

• A Notice to Vacate will be posted “in multiple visible locations at the area” at least 

72 hours prior to the closure.

• “City personnel shall not prevent occupants from retrieving their belongings before 

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vacating the encampment site.” 

• “City personnel shall not confiscate or remove belongings from site when the 

occupant is present, absent a reasonable belief that the belongings are an immediate threat to 

public health and safety or are evidence of a crime or contraband.”

• “[The Public Works Agency] shall itemize the belongings collected and include the 

location, date, and time of collection on the itemization form.”

• There is an exception to the previous paragraph for “belongings that are considered 

to be clearly trash or are unsafe for storage, such as food or food wrappers, soiled items, or used 

personal hygiene items.” Public works employees are directed to “immediately dispose of” such 

items.

• “A ‘Notice of Collected Property’ will be posted where the original ‘Notice to 

Vacate’ was previously posted, and will contain the [Public Works Agency] Call Center telephone 

number.”

• Public Works will store the collected belongings at a Public Works facility for at 

least ninety (90) days.

ECF No. 14-2 at 16-17.

The S.O.P. governs both permanent encampment closures and temporary “clean and clear” 

operations, after which encampment residents are permitted to return to living at the site. ECF No. 

14-1 at 4-5.

Plaintiffs Shipp and De Guzman are currently unhoused and live in an encampment located 

at East 12th Street and 16th Avenue in the City of Oakland. They have lived in encampments in 

other locations in the City from which they were evicted and their belongings seized. They allege 

that the City violates its own policy by disposing of unhoused persons’ belongings improperly. 

They “want the City of Oakland to follow their so called policy and stop throwing away people’s 

belongings . . . [and] do the job they are paid to do & bag, tag and & store our belongings for 90 

days.” ECF No. 1 at 5. They contend that the City’s actions violate their constitutional rights 

under the Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. 

On March 29, 2019, the Department of Public Works posted a notice that public works 

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crews would “temporarily close the encampment” in the median on East 12th Street from 14th to 

19th Avenues “between the hours of 8 AM and 4 PM” on Wednesday, April 3, 2019, or on the 

next business day, “to clean the site thoroughly.” ECF No. 3 at 3. The notice further cautioned 

that “[a]ny property left at this site at the time of cleanup will be removed from the site and stored 

by Public Works. Property that is unsafe or hazardous to store will be discarded immediately.” 

Id. 

Plaintiffs filed this pro se action on April 2, 2019, and immediately moved for a temporary 

restraining order and a preliminary injunction to prevent this temporary closure. ECF Nos. 1, 3, 7. 

Given the imminence of the closure, the Court issued a temporary restraining order on an ex parte 

basis that evening, enjoining the City from vacating Plaintiffs’ encampment for 14 days. ECF No. 

11 at 5. The Court further ordered the City to show cause why a preliminary injunction should not 

issue. Id. at 5-6. The City filed its response on April 8, 2019, ECF No. 14, and Plaintiffs did not 

file a reply. At the hearing on April 16, 2019, Plaintiff De Guzman appeared on his own behalf 

and offered testimony and argument. 

II. LEGAL STANDARD

A plaintiff seeking a preliminary injunction “must establish that he is likely to succeed on 

the merits, that he is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief, that the 

balance of equities tips in his favor, and that an injunction is in the public interest.” Am. Trucking 

Ass’ns, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles, 559 F.3d 1046, 1052 (9th Cir. 2009) (quoting Winter v. Nat. 

Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7, 20 (2008)). Injunctive relief is “an extraordinary remedy that 

may only be awarded upon a clear showing that the plaintiff is entitled to such relief.” Winter, 555 

U.S. at 22. 

To grant preliminary injunctive relief, a court must find that “a certain threshold showing 

[has been] made on each factor.” Leiva-Perez v. Holder, 640 F.3d 962, 966 (9th Cir. 2011) (per 

curiam). Assuming that this threshold has been met, “serious questions going to the merits and a 

balance of hardships that tips sharply towards the plaintiff can support issuance of a preliminary 

injunction, so long as the plaintiff also shows that there is a likelihood of irreparable injury and 

that the injunction is in the public interest.” All. for the Wild Rockies v. Cottrell, 632 F.3d 1127, 

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1135 (9th Cir. 2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

III. ANALYSIS

A. Likelihood of Success on the Merits

1. Eighth Amendment

Plaintiffs contend that the City’s practices violate their Eighth Amendment rights under 

Martin v. City of Boise, No. 15-35845, -- F.3d --, 2019 WL 1434046, at *15 (9th Cir. Apr. 1, 

2019).

The Eighth Amendment’s “Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause circumscribes the 

criminal process in three ways.” Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 667 (1977). “First, it limits 

the type of punishment the government may impose; second, it proscribes punishment ‘grossly 

disproportionate’ to the severity of the crime; and third, it places substantive limits on what the 

government may criminalize.” Martin, 2019 WL 1434046, at *26. At issue here is the third 

limitation, which the Supreme Court has cautioned must “be applied sparingly.” Ingraham, 430 

U.S. at 667.

In Martin, the Ninth Circuit synthesized the relevant case law as articulating “the principle 

. . . ‘that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the state from punishing an involuntary act or condition 

if it is the unavoidable consequence of one’s status or being.’” Martin, 2019 WL 1434046, at *27 

(quoting Jones v. City of Los Angeles, 444 F.3d 1118, 1135 (9th Cir. 2006), vacated, 505 F.3d 

1006 (9th Cir. 2007)). Applying this principle to a pair of ordinances that “criminalize[d] the 

simple act of sleeping outside on public property” anywhere in the city of Boise, the Ninth Circuit 

explained that, “as long as there is no option of sleeping indoors, the government cannot 

criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors, on public property, on the false 

premise they had a choice in the matter.” Id. at *27-28. In so doing, the Ninth Circuit emphasized 

that its holding was “a narrow one”:

Naturally, our holding does not cover individuals who do have access 

to adequate temporary shelter, whether because they have the means 

to pay for it or because it is realistically available to them for free, but 

who choose not to use it. Nor do we suggest that a jurisdiction with 

insufficient shelter can never criminalize the act of sleeping outside. 

Even where shelter is unavailable, an ordinance prohibiting sitting, 

lying, or sleeping outside at particular times or in particular locations 

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might well be constitutionally permissible. So, too, might an 

ordinance barring the obstruction of public rights of way or the 

erection of certain structures. Whether some other ordinance is 

consistent with the Eighth Amendment will depend, as here, on 

whether it punishes a person for lacking the means to live out the 

“universal and unavoidable consequences of being human” in the way 

the ordinance prescribes.

Id. at *27 n.8 (citations omitted). 

Martin’s holding does not extend to the situation here. First, the City’s decision to require 

Plaintiffs to temporarily vacate their encampment does not, by itself, implicate any criminal 

sanctions that would trigger Eighth Amendment protections. Nothing in the notice of temporary 

closure or elsewhere in the record suggests that the City intends to issue criminal sanctions as part 

of the temporary closure operation.

Rather, it appears from Plaintiffs’ motion that the criminal sanction they fear is a citation 

or arrest for failing to vacate the encampment. ECF No. 7 at 4-5. The Court notes that there is no 

evidence in the record that the City has previously enforced temporary enclosures via citations or 

arrests. However, even assuming (as Plaintiffs do) that this might occur, remaining at a particular 

encampment on public property is not conduct protected by Martin, especially where the closure is 

temporary in nature. The Ninth Circuit was clear: “[W]e in no way dictate to the City that it must 

provide sufficient shelter for the homeless, or allow anyone who wishes to sit, lie, or sleep on the 

streets . . . at any time and at any place.” Martin, 2019 WL 1434046, at *27 (alteration in original) 

(quoting Jones, 444 F.3d at 1138). This is not a case where “homeless plaintiffs do not have a 

single place where they can lawfully be” within the City. Id. (quoting Pottinger v. City of Miami, 

810 F. Supp. 1551, 1565 (S.D. Fla. 1992)). Faced with a similar motion seeking to enjoin the City 

on this basis, another court in this district has explained, “Plaintiffs are not faced with punishment 

for acts inherent to their unhoused status that they cannot control.” Miralle v. City of Oakland, 

No. 18-CV-06823-HSG, 2018 WL 6199929, at *2 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 28, 2018). The same is true 

here. 

Because the temporary closure does not impose criminal consequences – even indirectly –

in a manner prohibited by Martin, the Court need not find that Plaintiffs would have the “option of 

sleeping indoors” during this eight-hour period. Martin, 2019 WL 1434046, at *27; see also 

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Miralle, 2018 WL 6199929, at *2.

Accordingly, the Court concludes that Plaintiffs have not raised serious questions as to 

their Eighth Amendment claim.

2. Fourteenth Amendment

Plaintiffs next assert that an injunction is necessary because – contrary to its official 

policies – the City “has a pattern and practice of ‘unlawfully seizing and destroying personal 

property that is not abandoned without providing any meaningful notice and opportunity to be 

heard.’” ECF No. 7 at 6 (quoting Lavan v. City of Los Angeles, 693 F.3d 1022, 1027 (9th Cir. 

2012)).

In Lavan, the City of Los Angeles “admit[ted] that it failed to provide any notice or 

opportunity to be heard for [unhoused plaintiffs] before it seized and destroyed their property.” 

693 F.3d at 1032. Los Angeles argued only that plaintiffs lacked a “constitutionally protected 

property interest in unattended personal property left illegally on the public sidewalk,” id. at 1031, 

a suggestion that the Ninth Circuit rejected.

Here, as the Miralle court recognized, the S.O.P. “on its face, provides adequate notice and 

opportunity for Plaintiffs to be heard before property is seized.” Miralle, 2018 WL 6199929, at 

*3; see also Cobine v. City of Eureka, No. C 16-02239 JSW, 2016 WL 1730084, at *4 (N.D. Cal. 

May 2, 2016) (finding similar procedures “provided sufficient due process through advance notice 

and will provide adequate post-seizure remedies”). The notice of temporary closure was posted on 

March 29, 2019, more than 72 hours before the morning of April 3, 2019. ECF No. 14-2 at 45. 

The notice warned occupants to remove all belongings; in the alternative, the City stated that it 

would store property left at the encampment, so long as it was not “unsafe or hazardous to store.” 

Id. Under the S.O.P., belongings are stored for at least 90 days, and a Notice of Collected 

Property is posted at the encampment with information on how to retrieve stored property. ECF 

No. 14-2 at 16. 

At the hearing, Plaintiffs confirmed that their Fourteenth Amendment challenge is not to 

the S.O.P. itself. Rather, Plaintiffs contend that the City does not actually comply with the S.O.P.

and is therefore unlikely to comply with it in the future. If the record contained evidence that the 

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City had repeatedly violated its own policies regarding the destruction of unhoused persons’ 

property, it would raise serious questions as to the merits of Plaintiffs’ claim. However, the 

declarations submitted by Plaintiffs are too general to meet this burden. 

It is not sufficient to state, as Plaintiffs and their declarants do, that the City has sometimes 

removed and destroyed encampment members’ property. Sometimes the City has the right to do 

this. The S.O.P. permits City personnel to “confiscate or remove belongings . . . [that] are an 

immediate threat to public health and safety or evidence of a crime or contraband.” ECF No. 14-2 

at 17. Plaintiffs do not challenge these provisions, or the S.O.P.’s guidelines concerning the types 

of items that the City stores versus those it confiscates and destroys. Id. at 21.1 Therefore, when 

the City confiscates and destroys property, it is not possible to conclude that there has been a 

policy violation without knowing more. 

Plaintiffs’ declarations do not provide the “more.” Two declarants, Jesse Turner and 

Angel Diaz, both state that they witnessed the City improperly discard encampment residents’ 

belongings during closures, but do not provide any specific details from which the Court can infer 

that the discarded items should have been stored instead. See ECF No. 6-2 at 2; ECF No. 6-3 at 2-

3. It is equally possible that the items in question were properly seized and destroyed because 

they were unsafe, hazardous to store, or a threat to public health or safety, as it is that they were 

not. Plaintiffs simply do not address that question.2 And though Shipp and De Guzman report

that similar destruction occurred when the City closed their prior encampment on East 12th Street 

and 23rd Avenue, their evidence is similarly too general for the Court to find that the City violated 

 

1 Pursuant to the City’s guidelines, the Public Works Agency does not store items that are, among 

other things, “dirty or soiled,” “perishable,” “contaminated,” or “hazardous.” ECF No. 14-2 at 21. 

It also does not store bedding, pots and pans, or books. Id.

The Court notes as well that, to the extent that encampment residents disagree with the City’s 

decisions about which items can be stored, they have at least 72 hours to remove all items under 

the City’s policies.

2 Plaintiffs’ declarants do identify some purportedly destroyed items that are on the City’s 

presumptive storage list. See, e.g., ECF No. 6 at 3 (stereo system); ECF No. 6-1 at 2 (electronics, 

bicycles). Nonetheless, the items may have been in a condition that subjected them to seizure 

under the City’s policies. See note 1, supra. Again, the declarations are silent on this point. 

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its policies in that instance. ECF No. 6 at 2-3; ECF No. 6-1 at 2.

3

 Against this evidence, the Court 

weighs the City’s representations that it has consistently complied with its policies, either by 

properly storing items or cooperating with encampment residents to remove all items that should 

not be discarded. See ECF No. 14-2 at 5-6. Because the Plaintiffs’ declarations are so general, 

there is nothing to contradict the City’s representations. 

“To have standing to assert a claim for prospective injunctive relief, a plaintiff must 

demonstrate ‘that he is realistically threatened by a repetition of [the violation].’” Melendres v. 

Arpaio, 695 F.3d 990, 997 (9th Cir. 2012) (alteration in original) (quoting City of Los Angeles v. 

Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 109 (1983)). Where the threat of harm is not attributable to a written policy, 

plaintiffs must generally “demonstrat[e] that the injury was part of a pattern of officially 

sanctioned behavior.” Allen v. County of Lake, 71 F. Supp. 3d 1044, 1050 (N.D. Cal. 2014) 

(citing Melendres, 695 F.3d at 997-98). In order to obtain a preliminary injunction, moreover, 

“plaintiffs must make a clear showing of each element of standing.” Townley v. Miller, 722 F.3d 

1128, 1133 (9th Cir. 2013). Because Plaintiffs have not met their burden of showing that the City 

is violating its own policies, the Court cannot find a realistic threat that it will do so in the future. 

Discovery in this case regarding the City’s past conduct, or evidence concerning future 

“clean and clear” operations, may succeed in demonstrating that the City does not, in fact, comply 

with its own policies. The Court will consider such evidence if it emerges. On the present record, 

however, Plaintiffs have not met their burden of showing either a serious question going to the 

merits or a likelihood of future harm. Given those failures, the Court need not address the 

remaining factors. The Court will deny the motion for preliminary injunction. 

/ / /

/ / /

/ / /

/ / /

/ / /

 

3 At the Court’s invitation, De Guzman also gave testimony at the hearing on the motion. Though 

the Court considers that testimony, it does not provide material support for Plaintiffs’ claims.

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CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction is denied. 

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: April 16, 2019

______________________________________

JON S. TIGAR

United States District Judge

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