Albuquerque Homeless Lawsuit: Injunction, Appeals, and Trial

The Albuquerque homeless lawsuit, Williams v. City of Albuquerque, is a class action filed in December 2022 by eight unhoused residents who allege the city violated the New Mexico Constitution by destroying their belongings during encampment sweeps, citing and arresting people for sleeping on public property, and fining them for their status. After the New Mexico Supreme Court denied the city’s appeal in October 2025 and a state judge certified the class, the case is scheduled for trial in October 2026.¹²

What Triggered the Case

The lawsuit grew out of Albuquerque’s closure of Coronado Park, where between 60 and 120 unsheltered people had been living on the city’s east side. Mayor Tim Keller announced the shutdown in July 2022, calling the park a “public health and safety nuisance” and pointing to homicides, stabbings, and drug seizures on the grounds. Crews cleared it in August 2022, displacing more than 100 people.³⁴

The Coronado sweep was part of a broader pattern of encampment removals across the city. Displaced residents reported losing medications, identification documents, cellphones, carpentry tools, family photographs, and the ashes of loved ones. Internal communications between Mayor Keller and then-Police Chief Harold Medina, later obtained through the litigation, described the strategy as a plan to “hammer the unhoused.”⁴

Who Filed the Lawsuit and What It Alleges

On December 19, 2022, the ACLU of New Mexico, the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, Davis Law New Mexico, and the firm Ives and Flores filed a class-action complaint in the Second Judicial District Court of New Mexico on behalf of eight named plaintiffs, including LaDella Williams and Scott Yelton.⁵⁶

The complaint brings claims under the New Mexico Constitution and the New Mexico Civil Rights Act, a 2021 state law that bars qualified immunity as a defense and lets people sue public officials in state court for constitutional violations.⁷ The plaintiffs allege four categories of violations:

Seizing and destroying belongings without adequate notice, a hearing, or an opportunity to reclaim property.
Citing, arresting, or threatening to arrest people for being present on public property when no shelter or housing was available.
Imposing fines that amount to unconstitutional punishment for the status of being homeless.
Discriminating against people based on their housing status.

The suit asks for class certification, a declaration that the city’s practices are unconstitutional, and an injunction stopping encampment sweeps and the criminalization of outdoor living.⁶

The Injunction That Came and Went

In September 2023, State District Judge Joshua Allison granted a partial preliminary injunction. The order barred the city from enforcing laws that prohibited involuntarily unhoused people from being present or keeping belongings on outdoor public property, with exceptions for sidewalk obstructions and public school grounds, and it prohibited the seizure or destruction of unabandoned property without a valid warrant. It took effect November 1, 2023.⁶⁴

Sweeps continued at scale. Solid Waste Management crews visited more than 4,500 locations in 2023, more than double the previous year, and were on pace to clear nearly 6,000 locations in 2024. Between November 2023 and mid-May 2024, the city stored property for only 80 people; 11 retrieved their belongings.⁴

On March 1, 2024, Judge Allison modified the injunction, noting that the city’s encampment policy was “not very straightforward” and gave workers too much discretion. On May 17, 2024, he vacated it entirely. While acknowledging that the city had been discarding personal property, the judge cited “considerable challenges” in enforcing a judicial remedy and noted that a pending U.S. Supreme Court case could reshape the legal terrain. A trial that had been set for August 2024 was postponed.⁴⁸

Why Grants Pass Didn’t End the Case

The pending case was City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson. In June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court held 6-3 that the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit cities from enforcing generally applicable anti-camping ordinances against homeless people, overruling the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Martin v. City of Boise. The ruling returned broad authority to local governments and has since been invoked by more than 150 municipalities.⁹¹⁰

Albuquerque moved to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing Grants Pass had knocked out the plaintiffs’ legal basis. Judge Allison disagreed. He ruled that the New Mexico Constitution may provide greater protections against cruel and unusual punishment than the federal standard, and he emphasized that his position remained a pretrial ruling rather than a decision on the merits.¹ That is the central question the case now presents: whether a state constitution can independently bar the criminalization of homelessness after the federal courts have stepped back.

The City’s Failed Appeals and Class Certification

The city, joined by the City of Rio Rancho and the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office, filed an emergency appeal to the New Mexico Supreme Court seeking dismissal. The city called Allison’s ruling “egregiously flawed” and warned that it would prevent municipalities from managing encampments, causing “significant and immediate harm.”¹

District Attorney Sam Bregman filed an amicus brief arguing that the preliminary injunction had been an improper judicial intrusion on the executive and legislative branches. The brief contended that the Eighth Amendment applies only after a formal adjudication of guilt and that anti-camping laws regulate conduct, not status. Deputy District Attorney John Kloss warned that a ruling against the city could turn “sidewalks, roadways, parks” into “contested spaces.”¹¹

On October 16, 2025, the New Mexico Supreme Court denied the appeal without explanation, letting the lawsuit proceed. The next day, the city filed a separate appeal to the state Court of Appeals challenging Judge Allison’s October 2, 2025, order certifying the case as a class action. The certified classes include all current and future involuntarily unhoused people living outdoors in Albuquerque, all current and future unhoused people living outdoors, and all persons whose property was seized during the Coronado Park closure in August 2022. That appeal remains pending.¹

What Enforcement Has Looked Like During the Litigation

Jail bookings of people classified as homeless or “transient” in Bernalillo County rose from 3,670 in 2022 to nearly 12,000 in 2025, according to ProPublica. By late 2025, transient individuals accounted for roughly 49% of the county jail’s population.¹²

Charging volumes climbed with them. In 2025, the city filed 704 unlawful camping charges, up from 113 the year before. Sidewalk obstruction charges hit 1,256, nearly six times the total of the previous eight years combined. Trespassing charges topped 3,000, the highest annual total since 2017.¹²

Much of the incarceration follows what advocates call a “cascading” cycle. Police issue citations for minor ordinance violations to people without permanent addresses. Many miss court dates because they lack reliable mail or transportation. Bench warrants issue. Officers return to encampments, run warrant checks, and arrest the same people they cited weeks earlier. ProPublica reviewed 100 randomly sampled trespassing cases from 2025 and found 67 resulted in missed court dates and arrest warrants. Arrests tied to misdemeanor warrants rose 72% between 2024 and 2025.¹²¹³

Peter Cubra, an advocate involved in the 1995 McClendon v. Bernalillo County Detention Center class action over jail overcrowding, described the process as “slow-motion arrests.” The McClendon settlement required Albuquerque police to prioritize citations over arrests for nonviolent misdemeanors, and advocates argue the current citation-to-warrant pipeline effectively circumvents that agreement.¹³

The plaintiffs also point to a shelter gap. The January 2025 Point-in-Time count found 2,960 homeless individuals in Albuquerque, an 8% increase from 2,740 the year before, with 1,367 unsheltered. That unsheltered figure was up 26% from the prior year’s count of 977.¹⁴¹⁵ The plaintiffs argue that existing shelters are not only insufficient in capacity but also unsafe and unsanitary, conditions relevant to whether people can be penalized for staying outside.¹⁶

What the October 2026 Trial Will Decide

The trial will test a question with national reach: after the U.S. Supreme Court gave cities federal permission to enforce camping bans, can a state constitution still say no? Judge Allison has signaled that New Mexico’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment may be broader than the Eighth Amendment, but he has not ruled on the merits. The plaintiffs will need to prove their allegations of unconstitutional property destruction, status-based punishment, and discrimination against a factual record that includes years of sweep data, jail bookings, and the city’s own internal communications. The city’s class certification appeal remains pending before the Court of Appeals, and its outcome could reshape the scope of the trial before it begins.¹

1
Albuquerque Journal. NM Supreme Court Declines Albuquerque’s Appeal in Encampments Case
2
KOB 4. New Mexico Supreme Court Denies CABQ’s Appeal in Homeless Encampment Case
3
Source NM. ABQ Mayor To Close Coronado Park, Uprooting Encampment Amid Housing Shortage
4
ProPublica. Albuquerque Homeless Encampments
5
ACLU of New Mexico. Unhoused Residents Sue City of Albuquerque for Unlawfully Destroying Homes and Belongings
6
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Williams v. City of Albuquerque
7
ACLU. Historic Civil Rights Bill Signed Into New Mexico Law
8
ProPublica. Judge Lifts Order on Albuquerque Homeless Encampments
9
IMLA. Supreme Court Overrules Martin v. Boise in Important Homeless Encampment Case
10
Prison Legal News. Arrests of Unhoused People Driving Albuquerque Jail Bookings
11
KRQE. District Attorney Joins City of Albuquerque Against Lawsuit Filed by Homeless Group
12
ProPublica. Albuquerque Homelessness Citations Surge
13
News From the States. ABQ Mayor Said Arrests Were Not Solution to Homelessness, Yet Jail Bookings Have Skyrocketed
14
KRQE. 2025 New Mexico Point in Time Numbers Released
15
Ventana Fund. Homelessness Increased Again Across NM Since Last Year According to Latest Point-in-Time Count
16
NM Center on Law and Poverty. Unhoused Residents Sue City of Albuquerque for Unlawfully Destroying Homes and Belongings