United States Ninth Circuit

In an action claiming that defendant city and county failed to provide plaintiffs, Latino residents of neighborhoods in the city, with adequate municipal services for discriminatory reasons, summary judgment for defendants is affirmed in part where: 1) given defendants' evidence of a lack of disparity in actual access to sewer services, plaintiffs' statistical evidence was insufficient to give rise to an inference of discriminatory intent; and 2) defendant-county presented valid reasons why it chose to undertake certain infrastructure projects first. However, the order is reversed in part where: 1) the district court erred in dismissing the parties' 2004 property tax agreement as merely an automatic renewal of a past action, and thus dismissing plaintiffs' claims on statute of limitations grounds; and 2) plaintiffs presented evidence of the discriminatory impact of certain city policies which, in turn, created a sufficient inference of discriminatory intent.

Appellate Information

• Argued 05/11/2009
• Decided 10/08/2009
• Published 10/08/2009

Judges

• POLLAK, District Judge:, Before:  MARY M. SCHROEDER and STEPHEN REINHARDT, Circuit Judges, and LOUIS H. POLLAK, Senior District Judge.

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Brian Brosnahan, Kasowitz, Benson, Torres, & Friedman LLP, San Francisco, CA;  Robert Rubin, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, San Francisco, CA;  Donald Brown, Nathan E. Shafroth, Covington & Burling LLP, San Francisco, CA;  Madeleine Loh, Fitzgerald Abbott & Beardsley LLP, Oakland, CA;  Howard A. Slavitt, Coblentz, Patch, Duffy & Bass LLP, San Francisco, CA;  and Ilene J. Jacobs, Katherine Hogan, California Rural Legal Assistance, Marysville & Modesto, CA, for the appellants., Reed N. Colfax, D. Scott Chang, Relman & Dane PLLC, Washington, DC, for Amici The National Fair Housing Alliance, Fair Housing of Marin, Bay Area Legal Aid, Fair Housing Council of San Diego, California, The Housing Rights Center, The Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, Public Advocates Inc., and The Public Interest Law Project.


• For Appellees:
  
• John E. McDermott, Howrey LLP, Los Angelos, CA, for appellee City of Modesto., Terrence J. Cassidy, Porter Scott, Sacramento, CA, for appellee County of Stanislaus.