Reported / Citable
Background
Homeless veterans with serious mental illness or traumatic brain injuries pursued classwide relief concerning the Department of Veterans Affairs’ use of its West Los Angeles campus and the availability of permanent supportive housing there. A Ninth Circuit panel had allowed significant portions of their case and remedial theory to proceed.
The government sought rehearing en banc, asking a larger court to revisit questions involving disability statutes, class commonality, and judicial authority over the federal property. The court declined rehearing, producing extensive separate writing about the limits of the panel decision.
The Court’s Holding
The order leaves the panel decision operative. The panel understood the Rehabilitation Act and related law to permit the plaintiffs’ disability claims and treated the VA’s campus-wide policies as presenting questions capable of classwide resolution.
The dissent argued that Congress had not authorized the asserted private remedy against the federal government, that the class swept more broadly than people directly affected by the campus policies, and that courts lacked authority to direct the VA to create housing at the scale ordered. Those objections did not attract the votes necessary for rehearing en banc.
Key Takeaways
- Denial of rehearing preserves the panel ruling but does not itself resolve every issue in the underlying remedial proceedings.
- Federal disability-law claims can have major consequences for how the VA administers services and property.
- Class definitions must connect a common policy to a common injury and workable relief.
- The forceful dissent identifies issues likely to recur in later proceedings or Supreme Court review.
Why It Matters
The litigation directly affects veterans, service providers, and land-use planning on the West Los Angeles VA campus. California practitioners should read the operative panel opinion together with this rehearing order because the separate writing maps the central statutory, class-action, and separation-of-powers disputes that remain contested.