The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday upheld a federal judge’s order requiring the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to build 2,550 units of housing on its West Los Angeles campus.
A two-paragraph order denied the VA’s request to have the entire 9th Circuit review a three-judge panel’s rejection of its appeal.
“No further petitions for rehearing will be entertained,” the order said.
“It’s a really good day,’ said Mark Rosenbaum, the lead attorney in the class action case filed on behalf of disabled veterans.
“It’s a tribute to all the veterans who stood up to their government and demanded it honor its commitment to the men and women who sacrificed for their nation and found when they came home that their government would not stand up for them,” Rosenbaum said in a statement.
Rosenbaum, of the civil rights law firm Public Counsel, said he expects U.S. District Judge David O. Carter to quickly schedule status conference to set a compliance timetable for the government.,
The VA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The 2022 lawsuit alleged that the VA discriminates against disabled veterans by not providing housing on campus near the medical services they need to access.
It also challenged the VA’s leases of portions of the 388-acre campus to non-veteran interests, including UCLA and the private Brentwood School for athletic facilities.
In his October 2024 final judgment, Carter ruled those leases invalid. He ordered the VA to create up to 750 units of temporary housing in 18 months and an additional 1,800 permanent units over six years, all in addition to 1,200 units ordered in the settlement of a previous lawsuit.
Later that month, hoping to get some housing built before the rainy season, he ordered the VA to secure a contract within three weeks to install at least 100 modular units, some on the parking lot of UCLA’s Jackie Robinson Baseball Stadium.
The VA appealed, and the 9th Circuit panel stayed the order. Following oral arguments in the spring, the three judges issued a complex decision affirming Carter’s finding of discrimination but overruling his order invalidating UCLA’s lease for its baseball stadium.
In the Friday order, the three-judge panel unanimously rejected the VA request for an en banc hearing. A judge requested a vote on that decision, and it failed to receive a majority, the order said.
Three judges who were not on the panel all appointees of President Trump, dissented in 57 pages of argument characterizing Carter’s ruling as whimsical and judicially flawed. “We have no business ordering the VA to build thousands of housing units on a whim,” they concluded. “This is not the Ninth Circuit Court of Appropriations.”
Rosenbaum praised the ruling, which came on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, as a bright spot on a sad day.
“There are lots of ways to address what happened on 9/11,” Rosenbaum said. “This is one of the really good ways. Now the hope is the government will comply with the order, end veteran homelessness, get this out of the courtroom and get the veteran off the streets.”
Rob Reynolds, an Iraq war veteran who has spent years assisting homeless veterans seeking housing and services on the campus and testified on their behalf in the trial, said the timing of the ruling was “deeply significant.”
September 11, 2001, was the day he and thousands of fellow veterans decided to join, Reynolds said.
“Twenty-five years later to the day, this ruling is a reminder that the country’s obligation to those who served does not end when the war does,” Reynolds said. “The West Los Angeles VA has been mismanaged for decades, and court oversight is necessary to ensure the VA finally follows through on its obligations to our veterans.
“My hope is that the VA does not appeal this case to the Supreme Court, because any further appeal would only delay the oversight needed to ensure that happens.”
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