Elizabeth A. Mitchell

LOS ANGELES - As a deputy city attorney representing Los Angeles police officers, Elizabeth A. Mitchell learned "what good lawyering is and how to turn a case from zero to trial in 30 days," she said. She especially learned how to litigate constitutional rights.

She did not take any of the cases centered on the homeless back then, she said, because the city's response to such litigation was always reactive rather than proactive.

So not long after she joined Spertus, Landes & Umhofer LLP in 2018, activists and shopkeepers upset about homelessness in downtown L.A. came to her for help. She's been working on little else since.

After a year of research, she filed the lawsuit that is reshaping how the city and the county of Los Angeles address homelessness. This past spring, her clients and the city reached a settlement calling on the city to spend $3 billion over five years to house about 60% of its homeless. LA Alliance for Human Rights v. City of Los Angeles, 2:20-cv-02291, (C.D. Cal., filed March 10, 2020).

"It's a good settlement," she said. "It's a very good start in really seeing a difference for both the housed and unhoused population."

Her success traces in part to her early decision to declare her case as related to the big Orange County homelessness case overseen by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter. Someone told her at the time that bringing in Carter was akin to "bringing in a dragon on a leash," she said.

Carter accepted the case and within days, the parties agreed to suspend litigation to negotiate a settlement. But after about a year, the process stalled.

So Mitchell moved for a preliminary injunction. Nine days later, Carter issued an injunction more than 100 pages long that largely blamed L.A.'s homelessness on structural racism, and he ordered a $1 billion program to house Skid Row residents. "What we asked for at the time was unprecedented, and what he did was far more unprecedented than that," she said.

On an appeal by the city and county, the 9th Circuit reversed. It held that because the plaintiffs hadn't pleaded racism as a cause, Carter lacked authority to base his order on it.

Mitchell filed an amended complaint fixing the problems and soon returned to the negotiation table with the city, which agreed to the $3 billion deal in April.

She and her clients are still negotiating for the county to provide services and treatment for the unhoused. "It's their job," she said.