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A federal judge on July 12 denied an effort by lawyers and activists to certify a class of injured protesters in their lawsuit accusing the city of Portland of using excessive force during the 2020 protests.
For more than 100 consecutive nights, demonstrators flooded Portland streets to protest George Floyd’s murder. The police used non-lethal weapons against the crowds—6,000 times, according to the U.S. Department of Justice—injuring many.
District Judge Marco Hernandez noted “significant abuses” by the Portland Police Bureau but declined to certify a class, citing the varying circumstances and “disparate claims” of the protesters. Lawyers made the request for class certification earlier this year in an effort to widen the lawsuit’s scope and provide more opportunities to hold the city and police accountable.
“There were over 6,000 deployments of different types of force over more than 100 nights of protest, each of which requires its own individualized inquiry to determine whether force was excessive,” Hernandez wrote.
Juan Chavez, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, calls the decision “disappointing,” but says their lawsuit, originally filed in 2020, will go on.
The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction prohibiting the police from using certain types of force, and will demand monetary damages, Chavez says. Five plaintiffs, alongside the nonprofit Don’t Shoot Portland, are listed in the complaint.
“PPB should be worried,” Chavez says, noting that the judge called the facts of the case “deeply troubling.”
Now, Chavez says, lawyers will attempt to extract more evidence from the city, a process that has already proved fruitful.
In January, Mayor Ted Wheeler acknowledged that a meme, associated with the far right, had been used in police training materials. Wheeler said at the time that the city had uncovered the image, which portrayed an officer striking a “dirty hippy,” while compiling documents during the discovery process in the lawsuit.
