California state lawmakers have spent years tilting the rules toward new housing.
Projects that meet fixed standards can skip public hearings, and cities that say no face legal and financial risk. Still, muncipal and local neighborhood opponents never seem to run out of ways to try to scuttle projects. A Northern California federal court is embroiled in one of the latest examples.
In San Francisco, one of the most expensive housing cities in the world, opponents of an 848-unit residential structure above an existing Safeway grocery store have escalated to a new level. They invoked the Civil Rights Act of 1871, a law passed to protect Black Americans from Ku Klux Klan violence, when they sued the city in September.
Assembly Bill 2011 is increasingly at the center of these disputes. The 2022 state law lets qualifying projects on commercially zoned land skip public hearings and environmental review. Lawmakers broadened it last year, while community opposition groups keep probing its edges.
Neighbors and other opponents argue that the Safeway project doesn’t qualify for the shortcut. They claim the city shut them out of the process. Last week, the Marina Safeway developer’s lawyers asked the court to dismiss the suit. The filing called the opposition’s tactic “a deeper perversion” of a law meant to protect Black Americans from Klan violence. They argue that civil rights statutes exist to protect victims of discrimination, not to serve as “a weapon” for one of San Francisco’s “most well-resourced communities” to block new home development.
The project and the lawsuit
The developers’ plan would replace the Safeway at 15 Marina Blvd. and its parking lot with 848 homes. Eighty-six would be for lower-income households. The homes would rise in towers of 22 and 18 stories above a newly built grocery store at ground level. The site is zoned for 40 feet.
California AB 2011 instructs city planners to check only that the plans meet fixed rules. San Francisco declared the project eligible Aug. 13.
In response, YesAnd Foundation, Neighborhoods United SF and four residents sued Sept. 11 in federal court in San Francisco. The defendants named are the city, its planning and public health directors, and PG&E. PG&E once operated a power plant on the site.
Align Real Estate and Marina Property Owner LLC are named as real parties in interest.
The complaint says the plaintiffs “support the creation of housing generally.” It accuses city planners of “rubber-stamping” a project that doesn’t qualify.
Invoking a Klan-era law comes in
The neighbors’ only federal claim says the permitting and approval shortcut denied them a public hearing, violating their due process rights. They filed the case under Section 1983, part of a 1871 law. It is the only claim that qualifies the case for federal court.
Their other six claims arise under California law. Holland & Knight, the developer’s firm, argues that civil rights laws have long been “powerless” to undo the effects of the housing shortage. The state’s own housing law says the crisis has caused “discrimination against low-income and minority households.”
The brief says California has finally moved to end its pattern of privileging existing homeowners over people who need housing. The neighbors, it argues, want to use civil rights law “not to protect the victims of discrimination.” It says Section 1983 targeted a Klan “campaign of violence and deception,” quoting a 1985 Supreme Court ruling.
The brief also cites a 2008 Ninth Circuit ruling that rejected a similar claim from neighbors in Spokane. That court held neighbors have no constitutional right to a hearing on someone else’s permit. The brief argues that accepting the claim would turn every ministerial approval into a potential federal lawsuit.
A toxic-site dispute
But the plaintiffs also turned to a more common approach in fighting projects. They argue there are environmental dangers.
The Safeway sits on the site of an old PG&E steam plant, next to a former coal-gas plant. A state toxics official told city planners in December 2025 she didn’t expect the site “to qualify for streamlined approval.” She cited 2023 petroleum readings 10 times the residential screening level.
In 2024, the regional Water Board, the lead regulator, closed the cleanup of petroleum from the steam plant. It found “no unacceptable public health risks for the current land use.” That finding rested on the store’s commercial use, and the board said it “may reconsider” if the use changes.
The neighbors say the city approved the project before anyone sampled soil beneath the store. In February, the complaint says, the developer’s consultant acknowledged “a data gap.” The consultant said Safeway would not allow drilling while the store operates.
The developer’s lawyers say AB 2011 requires cleanup only before the city issues a certificate of occupancy. The neighbors argue that full contamination assessment must come first.
Questioning filing in federal court
The brief says state law now strongly favors housing. It cites the Housing Accountability Act, which it says requires courts to give “the fullest possible weight” to approving homes. Under that law, it argues, a city’s finding can be overturned only if no reasonable person could have reached it.
The developer’s attorneys target the lawsuit’s placement in federal court. Federal courts can’t issue the California-style court orders the neighbors want, they argue. If the federal claim fails, they contend, the case belongs in state court. Their brief notes no California court has yet interpreted AB 2011. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín will hear the motion Feb. 4, 2027.
