Class action lawsuit says Fresno discriminates against the homeless with arrests
A civil rights attorney filed a class action lawsuit against the city of Fresno alleging the homeless community has been criminalized and unduly prosecuted after the city adopted its anti-camping ordinance.
Attorney Kevin Little’s lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. Eastern District of California, names two Fresno men who live on the street in the class action for the homeless community in requesting damages and injunctive relief for false arrest, malicious prosecution and 24 other causes of action against the city.
The lawsuit follows hundreds of arrests and citations for unhoused people who violated Fresno’s anti-camping law, which allows police to arrest people living on the street who decline assistance from the city.
The lawsuit’s complaint said the city’s law criminalizes homeless people and does not offer any accommodations for those who are elderly or disabled.
Little said city of Fresno leaders have often said the law was meant to target the homeless and that shows the ordinance is biased. He said that works in the favor of his clients.
“We’re confident. The city of Fresno is making it somewhat easy for us (with) the many things said on the record that show they have a bias against the unhoused community,” he said.
He pointed to council meetings in which elected officials discussed the effort and how it targets the homeless. For example, city leaders called the effort “tough love” for the homeless in one of the earliest discussions about the ordinance.
“Through facially neutral but discriminatorily enforced laws, defendants have created a regime that punishes poverty, destroys personal property without due process, and subjects vulnerable populations to arrest, harassment, and danger without providing adequate shelter alternatives or reasonable accommodations,” the lawsuit says.
Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz said in a statement he expects the city to be able to defend its ordinance. One of the men named in the lawsuit, Joseph Quinney, told officers during his arrest that he had housing, according to Janz, who said the arrest was an example that the ordinance does not target people who are homeless.
“Kevin (Little) is a friend, and I look forward to taking this case to the Supreme Court — the same Supreme Court that upheld this sort of ordinance,” Janz said. “Again, the municipal law passed by the Fresno City Council does not punish housing status, just behavior.”
Janz was referring to the Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling by the Supreme Court in June 2024 that overturned protections against arrest for those who lived on the street if a city did not have open shelter beds. Fresno and several other cities followed that ruling with a tougher stance on the unhoused.
In Fresno, that included the two men named in the lawsuit, Quinney, 52, and Wickey Two Hands, 78. The latter’s arrest and prosecution drew media attention as the first of its kind in the state.
But the case ended before it began in April when the judge threw it out for violating Two Hands’ right to a speedy trial. Quinney, who the lawsuit says has “extremely impaired vision” and uses a walking stick, also had his case dismissed, this time without explanation, in August, Little told The Bee previously.
In both cases, the men had their property taken and not returned after their arrests, another violation of their rights, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint also argues the city violates the rights of the homeless in conducting sweeping efforts to make arrests and carrying out malicious prosecutions. These sweeps do not accommodate the unhoused who may be elderly or disabled when they are given a deadline to leave a particular area, the lawsuit says.
Fresno’s homeless population was tallied at 4,305, according to the last point-in-time count. That includes 2,758 who sleep unsheltered. The lawsuit notes the count is inexact, and advocates argue the population is much greater than the official count.
Fresno does not have enough shelter beds to house all of those without a place to sleep even if they all agreed to accept one. There are fewer than 1,000 year-round emergency shelter beds in Fresno, and they are almost always full, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development.
Shelter beds have also become more tenuous in Fresno in recent months. Two long-term housing units for those who are unhoused recently announced they do not have funding past January and will close. Recent cuts in federal funding also mean hundreds of other beds could lose support.
The lawsuit does not cite a dollar amount sought.
This story was originally published December 11, 2025 at 11:23 AM.
