A federal judge said on Thursday that most of the civil rights claims against the San Francisco police department for its arrests during the 2023 Dolores Park hill bomb could go forward, potentially setting up the city to defend a costly class action lawsuit.
The judge’s orders allowed the lawsuit to proceed, but did not rule on whether its claims were valid, which would require a jury trial. The city could also settle with the plaintiffs out of court.
Three teenagers are suing the city of San Francisco, the San Francisco Police Department, and several officers and police brass for what they allege were civil rights violations during the July 8, 2023, incident; one of the previous plaintiffs has dropped out of the suit.
That night, dozens of officers clad in riot gear surrounded and then arrested 113 young people — almost all of them teenagers, and 81 of them minors — after a crowd attending the annual “hill bomb” skateboarding event began vandalizing buildings and Muni vehicles, and throwing bottles and cans at officers.
Those encircled by the officers were arrested a block from Dolores Park on 17th Street between Guerrero and Dolores streets, where they had moved after officers issued multiple dispersal orders and advanced corner to corner, clearing crowds. The youth were held for hours on the street and in the cold, without food or water, and were kept separated from their parents nearby.
Several girls said they urinated on themselves, and some of the boys used a bucket thrown down by a neighbor to relieve themselves. Plaintiffs alleged that the city and the police officers violated their First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights, and violated their civil rights under California state law.
Magistrate Judge Lisa J. Cisneros issued two orders today: The first struck down the city’s attempt to deny a class action certification, meaning the suit from the three teenagers could potentially be expanded to include all 113 youth similarly arrested that day.
The second denied the teenagers’ free speech and racial discrimination claims. The plaintiffs had sought to argue under the First Amendment “that the Dolores Hill Bomb is an expression of skateboarding culture and its values of freedom and resistance to regulation in an urban landscape,” but, the judge wrote, “that alone is not sufficient to bring the gathering within the First Amendment’s ambit.”
Cisneros also denied the teens’ civil rights claims under the Fourteenth Amendment and a state civil rights law that concerns racial discrimination: Most of those arrested that day were Black and brown, but the judge dismissed discrimination claims as “not supported by law.”
But Cisneros did advance the bulk of the plaintiffs’ allegations — namely, that officers unreasonably detained the teenagers without probable cause and mistreated them by holding them in poor conditions — under the Fourth Amendment and the state’s Bane Act, a civil rights law that allows Californians to sue for alleged civil rights violations.
The judge wrote that she was “satisfied that plaintiffs’ allegations of an indiscriminate mass arrest without probable cause” could prove that “the defendants who ordered that arrest acted with reckless disregard for arrestees’ right to be free from unreasonable seizures.”
The Bane Act claim is particularly important: Police officers do not have qualified immunity under state law, meaning the officers — and their supervisors — can be held liable for their actions that night. Damages under the Bane Act are a minimum of $4,000 per person, but can reach up to three times the amount sought by the plaintiffs, plus attorneys’ fees and other compensation.
At a minimum, that would mean $452,000 in damages if all 113 youth join the class action, plus the other fees. But, in a trial, the jury could award much higher damages per individual, and the court could then triple them under the law, meaning the city could be on the hook for many millions more.
Rachel Lederman, an attorney with the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund who is representing the four teenagers in court, said she was pleased with the judge’s motions and “determined to obtain justice for the young people whose rights were violated.”
“All our main claims survived. The judge is really thinking about the case, so I feel very optimistic going forward,” she said, adding that the two parties will now move onto discovery to unearth evidence, but will also hold a conference in November to negotiate a possible settlement.
The city attorney’s office also expressed contentment, saying it was “pleased the court dismissed many of plaintiffs’ claims and appropriately narrowed this case moving forward.” It said that the city must “defend the police department’s ability to appropriately and legally control a crowd and to maintain public safety,” and that the city had been put in a bind: It has been sued in the past for “failing to prevent deaths or serious injuries” resulting from the hill bomb, and was now being sued for taking enforcement action to stop them.
“Some years the city will be faulted for not preventing reckless and dangerous conduct at an unpermitted event, and other years the city will be faulted for exercising appropriate crowd control and protecting public safety,” the office said in a statement.
