Safeway Marina developer accuses opponents of ‘weaponizing’ civil rights law – San Francisco Chronicle

Safeway Marina developer accuses opponents of ‘weaponizing’ civil rights law  San Francisco Chronicle

The developer behind the controversial plan to build 848 new homes on top of a Safeway store near San Francisco’s waterfront is accusing neighborhood opponents of using civil rights law as a “weapon” to keep new housing out of the low-rise Marina neighborhood. In a motion filed Wednesday, developer Align Real Estate asked a judge to dismiss a due-process claim brought by the YesAnd Foundation, Neighborhoods United and Four Marina residents as part of a lawsuit filed in federal court last month, and that any surviving claims be removed from federal court. In their lawsuit, which names Align alongside the city of San Francisco, city officials and PG&E, the Marina groups argue that the city violated their constitutional rights to due process by determining that the proposed 22-story project qualified for a streamlined approval process that did not give them the usual right to a public hearing or chance to comment.

That claim was brought under Section 1983, a federal law that allows people to seek redress when the government violates constitutional rights. Enacted in 1871 amid efforts to protect Black Americans from Ku Klux Klan violence, the law is now used to pursue a range of constitutional claims. In their lawsuit, the project’s opponents are seeking to invoke the Fourteenth Amendment's due-process guarantee, not a claim of discrimination. If