Marina Safeway's 848 homes face suit built on 1871 civil rights law

A federal lawsuit trying to stop Align Real Estate’s planned 848-unit redevelopment of San Francisco’s Marina Safeway site is built around a civil rights law passed in 1871 to curb the Ku Klux Klan, according to reporting by the San Francisco Standard. The suit, filed in October by the YesAnd Foundation and Neighborhoods United SF along with Marina homeowners, claims the city violated their due-process rights under Section 1983 when it approved the project without a public hearing. Holland & Knight, representing an Align entity, has moved to dismiss, arguing the civil rights claim misuses the statute.

Why it matters

The complaint does not explicitly mention race, according to the Standard. Instead, it argues the city denied plaintiffs a hearing they were owed when it found the project eligible for streamlined approval under state law AB 2011, which limits discretionary review for qualifying housing projects. For developers across San Francisco and the Bay Area, the case is a test of whether a federal civil rights claim can be used to slow a project after a streamlining law has already cleared it. The suit also alleges a violation of the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, a hazardous-waste law; the site sits next to a former PG&E gas plant in North Beach.

The numbers

The project calls for 848 homes on the Marina Safeway site. Plaintiffs twice asked to have the case assigned to U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick, who has handled prior PG&E gas-plant litigation; he ruled on Sept. 22 and again Oct. 2 that this case was unrelated. It now sits before U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, with a hearing on the motion to dismiss set for next February. San Francisco metro home values rose 3.1% year over year to a typical $1,120,379 as of September 2026, per Zillow’s Home Value Index, the kind of price pressure that keeps new-supply fights like this one high-stakes for the city’s housing pipeline.

What’s next

The motion to dismiss argues the case does not belong in federal court and that treating ministerial housing permits as grounds for federal civil rights damages claims would undermine state housing law. The filing casts the suit as an effort by a well-resourced neighborhood to keep new homes out. Ron Rowlett, government affairs director for the North Coast States Carpenters Union, whose union helped craft AB 2011 in 2022, said of the 1871 law: “It was to stop folks from stopping housing.” No ruling has been issued. The court has not yet weighed the merits of either side’s arguments.