Legal victory! Berkeley surrenders after being served

In April 2019, the City of Berkeley enacted a sanctuary contracting ordinance drafted by our executive director Brian Hofer. Sponsored by City Council Members Kate Harrison, Cheryl Davila, and Ben Bartlett, and supported by a community coalition of 38 organizations, the ordinance prohibits the award of a city contract to a vendor that supplies data or extreme vetting analytics (aka ‘Muslim Ban’ profiling software) to ICE. Richmond and Oakland have similar ordinances enacted into law.

Berkeley is reportedly the oldest ‘city of refuge’, a precursor to today’s Sanctuary City movement. As municipalities and the state of California began to prohibit state and city agents from cooperating with federal immigration efforts, ICE turned to the private sector to aid in its xenophobic agenda. Companies like Palantir, Thomson-Reuters, and Vigilant Solutions provide a treasure trove of data at the click of a button to ICE.

Unfortunately, Berkeley’s commitment to reform has always been suspect. Just a year earlier, as surveillance technology vetting frameworks became the norm in the greater Bay Area, Berkeley gutted their own version of that law and placed a ridiculously low attorney fees cap on the enforcement mechanism, ensuring that only wealthy individuals or well funded organizations willing to take a financial gamble will hold Berkeley accountable when it comes to compliance.

Just as Berkeley has often ignored the surveillance ordinance (subject of a forthcoming, separate lawsuit), Berkeley has already granted a waiver to award a contract to Thomson-Reuters under this Sanctuary Contracting Ordinance, one of the most egregious abusers in the ICE deportation apparatus. The contract between Thomson-Reuters and ICE requires that Thomson-Reuters provide ICE with the identities of 500,000 individuals per month for deportation proceedings. It is disheartening that Berkeley continues to enrich such a company willing to profit off of human misery.

After Berkeley refused to comply with its own ordinance by failing to certify compliance and refusing to provide the mandatory annual report that helps the public ascertain whether compliance was achieved, Secure Justice put them on notice of our intent to seek legal action. In addition to the ordinance’s 90 day right-to-cure period, we gave them an extra four months to comply before filing. They refused.

Luckily for the taxpayers of Berkeley, the city attorney quickly surrendered within days of being served with our lawsuit. Unfortunately for the taxpayers of Berkeley, in addition to their own attorney fees and court costs, they’ve had to pay Secure Justice’s attorney fees and court costs as well.

The City of Berkeley is expected to fully perform at its September 28th city council meeting by providing the required annual report. If they fail to do so, our settlement agreement ensures that the Court retains jurisdiction and in the event of a failure to honor the agreement, Secure Justice will get a court order compelling performance (with an additional award of attorney fees).

We are grateful to Iustina Mignea of the Mignea Law firm for her skillful and vigorous representation of Secure Justice in this action.