Date Filed: June 29, 2026
Original Court: Northern District of California
Case Status: Pending
Matthew Bernard and Lynn Warner own an undeveloped residential plot in Oakland, California. In 2020, the Oakland Fire Department ordered them to clear dead and dying trees from their land or face ongoing fines. The landowners hired an arborist and removed the hazardous, drought-stricken trees to comply with these fire safety mandates. However, when a tree care company applied for a formal removal permit, the City of Oakland denied it, explicitly stating that fire prevention was not a valid reason for tree removal under its Protected Trees Ordinance.
Years later, when the plaintiffs applied for a permit to build a single-family home on their property, the City retaliated. Following hearings where the plaintiffs were granted only 15 minutes to defend themselves, the City Council levied a staggering $915,135.40 fine for the prior tree removal, threatened to place a lien on the property, and halted all building permits. This penalty, calculated by a preset formula without any evidence of actual public harm, is roughly five times the total value of the land itself. Astonishingly, it is also eighteen times higher than California’s maximum statutory fine for the malicious arson of an entire forest.
In response to this egregious overreach, the Center for the American Future has stepped in to represent Bernard and Warner, filing a civil rights lawsuit to challenge Oakland Municipal Code § 12.36. The Center argues that the City’s actions constitute an uncompensated taking of private property, impose unconstitutional permit conditions without any nexus to actual public harm, and violate the Eighth Amendment’s protection against excessive fines. Through this litigation, the Center for the American Future seeks a declaratory judgment striking down the ordinance’s unconstitutional application, along with an injunction to stop the City from enforcing the ruinous penalty and withholding the plaintiffs’ development permits.
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