One day before a hearing to explore whether the city of Los Angeles mislead a federal court on its plan to clear thousands of homelessness encampments, the city’s outside counsel has asked an appeals court to remove the judge from the case.
In a brief filed Monday morning, attorneys for the city told the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that U.S. District Judge David O. Carter had made a litany of errors in overseeing the settlement — in which the city committed to providing housing or shelter for 12,915 people and clearing 9,800 tents, vehicles and makeshift shelters — and asked that it reverse many of his rulings
But they said that alone would be insufficient.
“Only the stronger medicine of reassignment will put a stop to the parade of irregular proceedings and rulings….” it said.
Later Monday, the city filed a second brief with the appeals court asking it to stay the hearing scheduled for Tuesday, saying it would not have sufficient time to prepare.
Carter called the hearing Tuesday to focus on a Superior Court ruling that the City Council violated the state’s open records act when it considered the encampment issue in closed session and “potential misrepresentations made to the court regarding the encampment reduction resolution.”
Carter said he was concerned by media reports suggesting the Council never actually voted on the plan but represented to the court that the plan — “a critical and material issue before the court” — had been approved.
He asked for a host of senior L.A. political and legal officials to attend: Mayor Karen Bass, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority interim chief executive Gita O’Neill, First U.S. Assistant Attorney Bill Essayli and Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman.
Theane Evangelis, lead attorney for the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher law firm representing the city, said in a statement that the “court has used this proceeding as an improper roving commission to dictate the city’s budget and its homelessness policy.”
The court, she said, “has regularly requested the attendance of elected officials, imposed intrusive surveillance on the city by an expensive special master and consulting firm, and routinely relied on extra-record material and his own fact investigation. The district court has also made frequent threats to hold the city in contempt and impose radical remedies.”
“In my humble opinion, the city needs to calm down,” said Matthew Umhofer, attorney for the LA Alliance for Human Rights, a organization of primarily business and property that filed the 2020 lawsuit alleging the city had failed to address street homelessness. “They seem to think they are entitled to stop a federal court from trying to figure out whether the city lied to the court.”
The Tuesday hearing is an interlude in a longer hearing that began last November over the LA Alliance’s contention that the city has repeatedly failed to comply with the 2022 settlement. That followed a hearing last summer in which Carter denied the Alliances request to place the city’s homeless program in receivership but found the city had “flouted” its responsibility to provide the court with “accurate and comprehensive data.” He ordered the appointment of a monitor to review and verify the city’s data.
The city’s legal team appealed the appointment of the monitor. Attorneys for the LA Alliance asked for the new hearing contending that the city was in contempt of the agreement for violating its obligation to accurately report on its progress not cooperating with the court’s special master and the data monitor.
A new twist then developed when a Superior Court judge in a separate case ruled that the city ran afoul of the Ralph M. Brown Act by approving the encampment strategy during a Jan. 31, 2024, closed session.
Subsequent statements by city officials led to doubt over whether a vote on the plan was actually taken, as the city’s attorney handling the case had assured the court it was.
The city’s brief to the 9th Circuit characterizes Carter as a judge out of control who has used the bench as a “bully pulpit to demand policy change…and to threaten aggressive actions that could make elected officials’ “lives miserable” or make them “dead politically….”
His errors, it said had forced the city to file three appeals already.
The plaintiffs counter that it’s the city that has prolonged the proceedings by not living up to its agreement and pursuing frivolous appeals, piling up legal bills for the city.
“It’s no wonder they’ve run up a $7.5 million bill,” he said.
“Whether the city lied or not, they still entered into an agreement to address almost 10,000 encampments across the city and we’re deeply concerned they’re not going to come anywhere near that number,” Umhofer said.
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