A federal judge overseeing Los Angeles’ long-running homelessness lawsuit expanded a contempt case against the city Wednesday, citing concerns that city officials may have misrepresented key facts to the court and violated California’s open-meeting law when approving a plan to clear thousands of homeless encampments.
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter said the new allegations stem from recently reported information suggesting the City Council may have never have publicly voted on a homeless encampment reduction plan that the city previously told the court had been approved – a plan central to a 2022 settlement agreement in the LA Alliance for Human Rights case.
Rather than initiating a separate case, Carter folded the new allegation into an ongoing contempt proceeding already underway against the city.
“Based upon newly reported information, there is reason to believe that the City of Los Angeles may have engaged in additional, previously unknown misconduct related to the 2022 settlement agreement when the City knowingly, willfully and intentionally misrepresented material facts to the Court,” Carter wrote in a supplemental notice.
The judge said he is now concerned that the City Council may have violated the Ralph M. Brown Act by considering and approving the plan behind closed doors, despite the city’s representation that the council had formally adopted it.
The judge cited a Jan. 5 ruling by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Curtis Kin, who found that the City Council violated the Brown Act during a Jan. 31, 2024, closed-session meeting when it approved a strategy to clear roughly 9,800 homeless encampments as part of its effort to comply with the federal settlement.
In that decision, Kin wrote that while the Brown Act allows elected officials to meet privately with attorneys to discuss legal strategy, it does not permit policymakers to formulate or approve major policy decisions outside public view simply because those decisions relate to a settlement agreement.
The dispute stems from a 2020 lawsuit filed by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights — a coalition of downtown business owners and residents — alleging the city and county failed to adequately address homelessness.
Los Angeles entered into a settlement agreement in 2022 requiring the city to add 12,915 beds by mid-2027, and the case has since evolved into a prolonged fight over compliance, oversight and the city’s encampment-clearing strategy.
Carter has repeatedly signaled skepticism about the city’s progress. In a June 2025 ruling, he found the city had failed to comply with several key provisions of the settlement and ordered the appointment of a court monitor to track the city’s progress on a quarterly basis and help the court in overseeing compliance.
The city’s push to clear roughly 9,800 encampments has also been a flashpoint in the litigation. Carter has previously ruled that a tent discarded by sanitation workers can count toward the city’s encampment-reduction goal only if the person who owned it was offered shelter or housing first.
Carter has been holding evidentiary hearings since November as he weighs whether Los Angeles should be held in contempt, after the Alliance accused the city of delaying or failing to meet its obligations under the settlement.
In recent orders, Carter has also urged top city leaders — including Mayor Karen Bass and City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson — to be present as the court considers the city’s compliance and accountability in the case.
Last week, Carter ordered the city to pay $1.6 million to cover the Alliance’s legal fees. He also directed Los Angeles to pay about $201,000 in legal costs incurred by the Los Angeles Community Action Network and the Los Angeles Catholic Worker, which have intervened in the case.
The city’s attorneys had notified the court that they plan to appeal that ruling.
Also on Wednesday, members of the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee pressed budget officials for a long-requested, comprehensive breakdown of homelessness spending, warning that they need the information before making near-term funding decisions tied to meeting obligations under the Alliance settlement.
Because the contempt hearing is already in progress, Carter said he would not open a separate case. Instead, he folded the new allegation into the existing case “in the interest of judicial economy.” He ordered all parties to preserve evidence and directed them to file Judge Kin’s briefing schedule by Jan. 21.
Carter said the city will be ordered to appear at a future hearing, to be scheduled by the court, to respond to the new allegation. He again invited Bass and Harris-Dawson to appear in court.
City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto’s Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the supplemental order.
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