Two homeless people have filed a class action lawsuit against the City of Fresno for enforcing its anti-camping ordinance.
The lawsuit was filed by Fresno attorney Kevin Little in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on behalf of Wickey Twohands and Joseph Quinney.
The backstory: The Fresno City Council passed an anti-camping resolution in August 2024, banning people from sitting, laying, sleeping or camping in public places.
Violators are given 24 hours notice to remove any property and may be fined up to $1,000 and jailed for up to one year if they refuse to move.
The ordinance was made possible by a Supreme Court decision last year that legalized anti-camping bans and allowed local governments to issue fines to violators.
The big picture: The lawsuit argues that Fresno’s anti-camping ordinance violates the Constitutional rights of the homeless.
Claims in the lawsuit include false arrest, malicious prosecution, violation of due process, violation of equal protection, violation of Fourth and Fifth Amendment property rights and over a dozen others.
Flashback: Fresno already tried to prosecute TwoHands for violating the anti-camping ordinance, but a judge dismissed the case because the city did not provide him with a speedy trial.
What they’re saying: Little said in a press release that the lawsuit shows a broader pattern of systemic abuse.
“Kevin is a friend, and I look forward to taking this case to the Supreme Court – the same Supreme Court that upheld this sort of ordinance,” Janz said. “Again, the municipal law passed by the Fresno City Council does not punish housing status, just behavior. To that point, one of the just two named plaintiffs, Joseph Quinney, told officers he had housing.”
“The latest event in that pattern of abuse is the recent amendments intensifying the City’s anti-camping ordinances, which now will criminalize even pedestrian unhoused persons and give the City broad powers to issue restraining orders against unhoused persons simply based on their status and even if they have never been convicted of any crime,” Little said.
He accused the city of doubling down on criminalization.
“The challenged ordinances are enforced selectively and discriminatorily against unhoused persons while housed individuals engaging in identical conduct face no consequences,” Little said. “Enforcement practices also include mass arrests, encampment sweeps, immediate destruction of property without preservation for retrieval, failure to provide ADA accommodations, elder abuse, and empty and coercive offers of typically unavailable substance-abuse programs.”
In response to the lawsuit, Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz defended the anti-camping ordinance.