Siskiyou County has argued it needs water ordinances in place to combat illegal cannabis grows. The plaintiffs say they have difficulty getting water day to day.
By Alan Riquelmy, Courthouse News Service
Northern California’s Siskiyou County took another hit Tuesday when a federal judge denied its summary judgment motion in a case over residents’ claims they’re not getting the water they need.
The putative class — many of whom are Asian American and live in a part of the rural county called Shasta Vista — sued in 2022, claiming Siskiyou County and Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue have used discriminatory traffic stops and improper search and seizure methods. They also claim officials have used water ordinances to deprive them in an area with no public water system.
County officials have said the local ordinances that prevent the transfer of water to the Shasta Vista residents are needed to combat illegal cannabis grows. But the plaintiffs contend they’re used against a minority population that needs water.
Under a preliminary injunction, the county is currently blocked from enforcing the water ordinances. However, that order doesn’t require inaction by the county if people use groundwater to grow cannabis illegally.
Senior U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller in her Tuesday ruling said that she’d consider lifting that injunction, if officials could show Shasta Vista residents could get enough water day to day.
“The county has not attempted to do so,” the judge said.
Arguing in June for summary judgment, the county said that the plaintiffs can’t prove officials violated the due process clause. Additionally, it said the claims about the water ordinances are moot, as they’ve since been modified or repealed.
Mueller clipped that argument.
“The Supreme Court has held that a case does not become moot simply because a defendant makes changes to a challenged law or ordinance, even if those changes reduce the ‘degree’ of the damages to the plaintiffs,” she said. “Here, the case is not moot if the new ordinance still ‘disadvantages [the plaintiffs] in the same fundamental way.’”
Mueller then pivoted to whether the county made a “state-created danger” through its actions.
The county has argued the Shasta Vista residents chose to live in an area with no reliable water source. County officials compelled no one to live in an undeveloped area where it’s costly to drill a well.
“A defendant can face liability under a theory of state-created danger even if the defendant had authority to take the action in question, even if the defendant was enforcing an otherwise legitimate law, and even if the plaintiff’s or another person’s decisions might have exacerbated the alleged injury,” Mueller said.
The judge pointed to case law when deciding that a plaintiff who could have avoided danger can still pursue a state-created danger claim. That’s what occurred in the 2016 Ninth Circuit Pauluk v. Savage case, when a government employee could have quit their job to escape toxic mold in the office.
“For these reasons, [Russell] Mathis and other Shasta Vista residents ultimately could prevail at trial even if the county proves conclusively that they chose to live on land without a reliable, permitted source of clean water,” Mueller said, adding later: “Plaintiffs have cited evidence that, if credited, could prove the county created a danger by stopping the water deliveries they had come to rely upon.”
Mueller also focused a portion of her decision on the legal standard of deliberate indifference. She noted that plaintiffs must prove at trial that defendants knew their actions would expose them to unreasonable risk.
In this case, the plaintiffs have shown that county officials knew many people in Shasta Vista would face water shortages for basic daily needs if the county enforced a zoning ordinance against distributors, Mueller said.
The county has argued that its ordinances stem from legitimate goals, and that it forced no one to live on the land, prevented people from getting a well-drilling permit or stopped them from asking for a zoning change.
“It has cited no evidence that could show it attempted to mitigate the risks of cutting off water access to Shasta Vista, for example by ensuring relatively small quantities of water would be available at low cost on a temporary basis or by expediting permits to drill wells,” the judge said.
“The county cannot prevail by proving the legitimacy of its goals,” she added.
Attorneys on either side couldn’t be reached for comment as of publication time.
