R.R. 1900, LLC v. City of Sacramento

• Decision Date: 26 May 2022
• Docket Number: 2:21-cv-01673-WBS-DB
• Citation: 604 F.Supp.3d 968
• Parties: RAILROAD 1900, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF SACRAMENTO, a municipal entity, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of California

604 F.Supp.3d 968

RAILROAD 1900, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, Plaintiff,

v.CITY OF SACRAMENTO, a municipal entity, Defendant.

No. 2:21-cv-01673-WBS-DB

United States District Court, E.D. California.

Signed May 26, 2022

Rachel Renee Johnson, El Dorado Hills, CA, Joshua Heath Escovedo, Weintraub Tobin Chediak Coleman Grodin, Sacramento, CA, for Plaintiff.

Chance Louis Trimm, Andrea Michelle Velasquez, Sacramento City Attorney's Office, Sacramento, CA, for Defendant.

ORDER RE: MOTION TO DISMISS

WILLIAM B. SHUBB, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

This action brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 challenges the City of Sacramento's alleged failure to enforce anti-camping and other ordinances against homeless individuals in the area surrounding plaintiff's property. (Compl. (Docket No. 1).) Plaintiff brings federal claims alleging violation of due process (count one), violation of equal protection (count two), state-created danger (count three), uncompensated taking (count four), and municipal liability (count five), in addition to five causes of action under California law. (Id. )¹

I. Due Process Claim

" Article III of the [United States] Constitution confines the federal courts to adjudicating actual ‘cases’ and ‘controversies.’ " Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 750, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984), abrogated on other grounds, Lexmark Int'l, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 572 U.S. 118, 128, 134 S.Ct. 1377, 188 L.Ed.2d 392 (2014). "The Art. III doctrine that requires a litigant to have ‘standing’ to invoke the power of a federal court is perhaps the most important" aspect of the case-or-controversy limitation. Id. "In essence the question of standing is whether the litigant is entitled to have the court decide the merits of the dispute or of particular issues." Id. at 750-51, 104 S.Ct. 3315 (quoting Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975) ).²

Pursuant to the standing requirement, the Supreme Court "has repeatedly held that an asserted right to have the Government act in accordance with law is not sufficient, standing alone, to confer jurisdiction on a federal court." Allen, 468 U.S. at 754, 104 S.Ct. 3315 (citing Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 94 S.Ct. 2925, 41 L.Ed.2d 706 (1974) ; Valley Forge Christian Coll. v. Ams. United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 102 S.Ct. 752, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982) ). This follows from the fact that, as the Supreme Court has consistently held, "a private citizen lacks a judicially cognizable interest in the prosecution or nonprosecution of another." Linda R.S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S. 614, 619, 93 S.Ct. 1146, 35 L.Ed.2d 536 (1973) (citing Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 42, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971) ; Bailey v. Patterson, 369 U.S. 31, 33, 82 S.Ct. 549, 7 L.Ed.2d 512 (1962) ; Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 501, 81 S.Ct. 1752, 6 L.Ed.2d 989 (1961) ); see Lefebure v. D'Aquilla, 15 F.4th 650, 654 (5th Cir. 2021) ("It is a bedrock principle of our system of government that the decision to prosecute is made, not by judges or crime victims, but by officials in the executive branch. And so it is not the province of the judiciary to dictate to executive branch officials who shall be subject to investigation or prosecution.") (citing Linda R.S., 410 U.S. at 617, 619, 93 S.Ct. 1146 ; United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 693, 94 S.Ct. 3090, 41 L.Ed.2d 1039 (1974) ).

This principle extends not only to criminal prosecution, but to civil enforcement as well. Doe ex rel. Doe v. Darien Bd. of Educ., 3:11-cv-1581 (JBA), 2012 WL 4092662, at *3 (D. Conn. Sept. 17, 2012) ; Gutierrez v. City of Carson, LA 10-cv-7627 JAK (CWx), 2011 WL 7129239, at *7 (C.D. Cal. Dec. 16, 2011) ; see, e.g., Allen, 468 U.S. at 739-40, 104 S.Ct. 3315 (parents lacked standing to sue IRS for failure to "adopt[ ] sufficient standards and procedures to fulfill its obligation to deny tax-exempt status to racially discriminatory private schools"); In re Att'y Disciplinary Appeal, 650 F.3d 202, 203-04 (2d Cir. 2011) (client lacked standing to challenge decision not to discipline client's former attorney) (citing Linda R.S., 410 U.S. at 619, 93 S.Ct. 1146 ); White v. City of Toledo, 217 F. Supp. 2d 838, 840 (N.D. Ohio 2002) ("The law is well established that a city's alleged failure, even if intentional, to enforce [a] speed limit does not state a § 1983 [claim] against a municipality.") (citation omitted). § 1983 plaintiffs therefore "lack standing to seek judicial review of ... executive decisions" not to enforce laws against other individuals. Lefebure, 15 F.4th at 655 ; see id. (collecting cases); Allen, 468 U.S. at 754, 104 S.Ct. 3315. Because this is precisely what plaintiff seeks to do through this action, it lacks Article III standing to pursue its constitutional claims.

Plaintiff alleges it has been injured by the development of homeless encampments near its property and by the conduct of individuals living there. (Compl. at ¶¶ 15-21.) However, the specific conduct by the City that plaintiff challenges is the City's "fail[ure] and refus[al] to enforce [state and local] laws" and to "clear the homeless out of this de facto containment zone." (Id. at ¶ 16.) Stated more directly, plaintiff challenges the City's failure to enforce its laws against homeless individuals living near plaintiff's property, and apparently seeks an injunction compelling the City to do so. (See Opp. at 1 (plaintiff challenges "Defendant's refusal to enforce its own laws and those of the state that prohibit homeless persons from loitering, vandalizing, and otherwise inhabiting and destroying Plaintiff's private property and the surrounding public property") (Docket No. 17); Compl., Prayer (seeking "[i]njunctive/equitable relief in a manner to be determined by law").) As explained, however, plaintiff lacks standing to sue the City for failing to enforce the law against others because it has no judicially cognizable interest in such enforcement. See Allen, 468 U.S. at 754, 104 S.Ct. 3315 ; Linda R.S., 410 U.S. at 619, 93 S.Ct. 1146 ; Att'y Disciplinary Appeal, 650 F.3d at 203-04.

Plaintiff relies heavily upon the district court's decision in Hunters Capital LLC v. City of Seattle, 499 F. Supp. 3d 888 (W.D. Wash. 2020). The plaintiffs in that case, a group of business and property owners, brought civil rights claims against the city challenging its allowance of and support for the "Capitol Hill Occupying Protest" ("CHOP"), a barricaded area encompassing the plaintiffs’ properties in which the City of Seattle did not enforce local or state laws against occupying protestors. See id. at 893-99. While the court declined to dismiss most of the plaintiffs’ constitutional claims, including multiple claims alleging violation of due process, it did not address the issue of standing. See id. at 899-906.

Moreover, the plaintiffs’ claims in Hunters Capital were based not only on the city's alleged non-enforcement of the laws, but also on the city's substantial, affirmative provision of material support to the occupying protestors in establishing the so-called "Autonomous Zone." Id. at 893. In particular, the city "allegedly provided CHOP participants with medical equipment, washing/sanitation facilities, portable toilets, nighttime lighting, and other material support" and "fortified ... CHOP by providing participants with sturdier concrete barriers" with which to block people and vehicles from entering. Id. at 894-95 (internal quotation marks omitted). The mayor also "allegedly issued a statement indicating that the City ... had no plans to cease supporting CHOP and that the City was instead acting to work with and preserve CHOP." Id. at 896 (internal quotation marks omitted). The court relied on these allegations in concluding that the plaintiffs had "plausibly allege[d] ... that the City's affirmative actions in support of CHOP" caused a deprivation of the plaintiffs’ constitutionally protected property interests and thus sufficiently alleged a violation of due process. See id. at 900-01.

In contrast, plaintiff in the present case does not allege that the City engaged in any affirmative conduct to support the development of the homeless encampments beyond the alleged non-enforcement decision itself. (See Compl. at ¶¶ 14-25)³ ; White v. City of Minneapolis, 21-cv-371 (WMW/KMM), 2021 WL 5964554, at *1-2 & n.1 (D. Minn. Dec. 16, 2021) (distinguishing Hunters Capital, in due process § 1983 action challenging city's failure to provide police protection during protest, leading to burning of plaintiff's business, on ground that plaintiffs did not allege city "actively supported any third-party agitators[,] whether by providing resources ... or by issuing public statements in which they expressed a desire to preserve the unrest"). This alone is insufficient to demonstrate a judicially cognizable interest, which is necessary to confer standing upon plaintiff. See Allen, 468 U.S. at 750-51, 754, 104 S.Ct. 3315 ; Linda R.S., 410 U.S. at 619, 93 S.Ct. 1146 ; Lefebure, 15 F.4th at 655.

II. State-Created Danger Claim

Plaintiff also brings a separate claim alleging state-created danger, a type of due process violation. See Martinez v. City of Clovis, 943 F.3d 1260, 1271 (9th Cir. 2019). Like plaintiff's first due process claim, the crux of the state-created danger claim is that the City has created dangerous conditions, to which plaintiff has been exposed, by failing to enforce its laws against homeless individuals residing near plaintiff's property. (See Compl. at ¶¶ 14-21, 29-31.) Thus, this claim likewise directly challenges the City's failure to enforce the law against others, and therefore plaintiff also lacks standing to pursue it.

This claim fails for other reasons as well. Under the state-created danger rule, "the state may be constitutionally required to protect a plaintiff that it ‘affirmatively places in danger by acting with deliberate indifference to a known...