The proposition to reopen the Great Highway to cars will stay on the ballot despite a legal challenge to remove it, a San Francisco Superior Court judge ruled on Friday morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The lawsuit<\/a>, filed in June by the park advocacy group Friends of Sunset Dunes, challenged the legality of a signature-gathering petition<\/a> circulated by park opponents, arguing that the petition contained \u201cobjectively false and\/or misleading statements.\u201d The petition gathered over 15,000 signatures<\/a> and Prop. G qualified for the ballot in late July.<\/p>\n Judge Harold E. Kahn denied the park advocates\u2019 petition and ruled that \u201cthe allegedly false statements are not false beyond dispute.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It was a win for the Great Highway for Everyone campaign, which is working to convince citywide voters \u2014 not just those in the Westside \u2014 to give up a coastal park and reopen the Upper Great Highway to cars five days a week.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe won the right to be on the ballot,\u201d said Jamie Hughes, the campaign spokesperson of Great Highway for Everyone. Had Friends of Sunset Dunes won, Hughes added, \u201cit would\u2019ve set a dangerous precedent where, if you have more money, you can pay expensive lawyers and take something off the ballot that voters put on themselves.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Friends of Sunset Dunes disputed seven claims in the Great Highway for Everyone campaign\u2019s petition. For one, the petition stated that \u201cthe roadway surface remains suitable for dual use,\u201d but park advocates argued that park amenities on Sunset Dunes, such as a skate park, prevented it from being readily used as a roadway.\u00a0<\/p>\n The judge disagreed. \u201cIt seemed to me that \u2018remains suitable\u2019 is subject to varying interpretations and understandings here,\u201d Kahn said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another argument from the park advocates attacked the claim that the Upper Great Highway closure \u201celiminated a critical coastal evacuation route\u201d during a natural disaster.\u00a0<\/p>\n They argued that the statement is false and that the Upper Great Highway is not a critical evacuation route, based on a letter from the Department of Emergency Management<\/a> stating that the Upper Great Highway \u201cis not a designated evacuation route and closing it to private vehicles will not change our existing emergency response protocols.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe word \u2018critical\u2019 does have some aspect of opinion to it,\u201d said Kahn,\u201cand potentially even hyperbole.\u201d Still, he added, though \u201cthis does sound like political talk, perhaps an overstatement,\u201d it wasn\u2019t enough justification to yank a qualified measure off the ballot.<\/p>\n It comes down to, the judge said, \u201cdo they meet this incredibly high standard of \u2018false\u2019 on an objectively verifiable standard and beyond dispute, based on clear and convincing evidence?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n None of the allegedly false or misleading claims cited by Friends of Sunset Dunes pass that \u201cobjectively verifiable test,\u201d Kahn ruled.\u00a0<\/p>\n A voter initiative is an exercise in democracy, Kahn added. If doubt exists as to whether the statements used to gather signatures for Prop. G are true or false, \u201cit\u2019s the voters, not the court, that make the call. And there\u2019s some doubt here.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI recognize I could be wrong,\u201d Kahn continued. \u201cI want to give the opportunity to the aggrieved party today to seek appellate review.\u201d The park advocates said they will consider filing an appeal.\u00a0<\/p>\n If they do so, there will be two lawsuits at the San Francisco Appellate Court regarding the Upper Great Highway. A group of anti-park organizers appealed<\/a> earlier this year to overturn<\/a> a judge\u2019s January decision<\/a> that denied the arguments to overturn Prop. K, which created the park.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur focus is very clear,\u201d said Lucas Lux, the president of Friends of Sunset Dunes. \u201cIt\u2019s to take the campaign to voters and make sure the voters understand the truth of the measure.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The proposition to reopen the Great Highway to cars will stay on the ballot despite a legal challenge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[168965,35072,976,101,103,102,104,106,105,18069],"class_list":["post-440060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-ballot-measures-2026","tag-election-2026","tag-richmond","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sunset"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}