Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho complained of a lack of prosecutions against homeless encampments in August 2023. A month later, he sued the city and continue to do so. s
Paul Kitagaki Jr.
pkitagaki@sacbee.com
More than two years ago, under a different Sacramento mayor, in a dark moment in our region’s struggle with chronic homelessness, District Attorney Thien Ho, with extraordinary fanfare, sued the city. He thought Sacramento’s response to the ongoing humanitarian crisis was insufficient and downright unlawful.
It took only a matter of months for the Sacramento County Superior Court to neuter Ho’s argument as unfounded as a matter of law. It was a complete defeat. Ho nonetheless filed another similar case.
Instead of pushing aggressively for a new hearing on his lawsuit’s merits, Ho has basically been looking for some way out of his self-created political mess — a prosecutor who doesn’t know what he is doing.
Now, as detailed by The Bee’s Ishani Desai, Ho has filed a vague motion in court suggesting a possible settlement with the Sacramento City Council, although none has been approved.
Thien Ho lost this case a long time ago.
An ignorance of the law
There is something in governance and the law known as the separation of powers. A district attorney, for example, prosecutes criminals and those who have committed civil wrongdoing. A city, meanwhile, manages everything from water and parks to police and, yes, its unhoused population.
Neither has jurisdiction over the other. Our whole structure — in the Constitution and statutes — is designed to prevent one body of government from swimming outside its legal lane to take over what another is lawfully doing, rightly or wrongly.
Thien Ho basically tried to become the city manager of Sacramento. It didn’t work. It never will.
This stunt began to unfold in a pleading filed in September 2023. Its debut was in a bizarre press conference where Ho was surrounded by residents affected by the homeless crisis. Our top prosecutor then began to advance his case.
“The City of Sacramento’s complete and utter failure to enforce any of its city ordinances related to the unhoused crisis has been hidden from the public,” Ho detailed in his initial pleading. “This failure has resulted in the decay and destruction of the once-bucolic City of Trees.”
Conveniently missing from Ho’s complaint was how a federal court ruling in the Western District that includes Sacramento had largely prevented cities from removing homeless people from their boundaries absent an option for shelter. And then there was that pesky constitutional boundary about how a district attorney does not manage a city.
It didn’t take long for Sacramento’s lead attorney at the time, Susana Alcala Wood, to run rings around Ho in court. Her capable staff filed a motion known as a demurrer. This is a way, prior to trial, to eviscerate a claim as legally insufficient.
In May 2024, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Jill H. Talley agreed with Sacramento and approved the demurrer.
“The Court agrees that the separation of powers doctrine bars all of the People’s claims as presently alleged,” Talley wrote.
When Ho began to stall
The judge gave Ho 30 days to try again and file another case. He foolishly did. And then he began to punt. One motion after another called to stay the case. Ho was avoiding the day of reckoning.
On Thursday, Ho filed a motion that was, per custom, confused. “The settlement agreement conditions dismissal of this matter on the satisfactory completion of specified terms that are not to be performed within 45 days of the date of the settlement.”
Pause.
“The settlement.”
There is no settlement.
Setting aside this case, Ho actually was on the winning side of a broader national legal debate about homelessness management back in the summer of 2024. That was when the U.S. Supreme Court unshackled Sacramento and every other jurisdiction to move homeless people, even if there was no alternative option for shelter. The city has increased such citations and arrests ever since. Ho should have claimed victory and withdrawn his case.
Ho’s lawsuit against Sacramento is by far his most important and telling action while district attorney. Nobody in his office in modern times, if ever, has dragged Sacramento so needlessly through the mud like Thien Ho. The council is scheduled to discuss the lawsuit in closed session, yet again, Tuesday at noon.
And surely, the timing of this alleged settlement has absolutely and positively nothing to do with Ho running for Congress in California’s 6th District, which includes the northern portion of the city. This means Ho seeks to represent a portion of a city he continues to sue.
Ho’s awkward predicament is its own delicious form of justice. The Sacramento City Council shouldn’t provide him any semblance of a safe harbor given how horribly he has treated the city. There’s only one way to deal with a bully.
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Tom Philp is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist who returned to The Sacramento Bee in 2023 after working in government for 16 years. Philp had previously written for The Bee from 1991 to 2007. He is a native Californian and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.