Santa Rosa nonprofit Crossing the Jordan sues over stay-at-home orders
Santa Rosa nonprofit Crossing the Jordan, which has racked up two dozen citations from city police over suspected violations of Sonoma County’s stay-home order, is suing to challenge state and local pandemic restrictions and to defend its decision to continue operating several thrift stores amid the shutdown.
Between May 12 and May 20, the Santa Rosa Police Department issued eight citations for each of the three thrift stores operated in the city by Crossing the Jordan. The organization for years has funded homeless shelter operations and provided job training by running six consignment stores across Sonoma County.
Crossing the Jordan is the only business in Santa Rosa that has been cited for alleged violations of the shelter-in-place order, said Santa Rosa Police Capt. John Cregan on Tuesday. A police team has responded to more than 200 reports of businesses not following the rules of the county’s coronavirus health order, Cregan said - and Crossing the Jordan stands alone among those enterprises.
“All businesses, with the exception of Crossing the Jordan, were found to be in compliance or made changes to become compliant after they were contacted by the Police Department,” Cregan said.
The misdemeanor citations went to Michael Bryant, CEO and co-founder of the nonprofit, who was repeatedly arrested and released over the nine-day span in a process akin to a traffic ticket, according to Matthew Becker, the Sacramento attorney representing Bryant and his wife and business partner, Dana Bryant, executive director of Crossing the Jordan.
Most retailers weren’t allowed to reopen in the county until May 8, when an amendment to the shelter-in-place order by Dr. Sundari Mase, the county health officer, allowed stores to operate via curbside pickup.
The Bryants and their attorney emphasize that the shops’ revenue is a fundamental part of Crossing the Jordan’s enterprise, providing funding for long-term residential shelter for people who would otherwise be homeless, as well job skills training.
Their 36-page lawsuit, filed May 13 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, challenges Mase’s order and the statewide pandemic restrictions imposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration. It raises more than a dozen arguments about the constitutionality of the stay-home orders, invoking the rights to be free from unreasonable seizures as well as unreasonable fines and cruel and unusual punishments.
“These shelter-in-place orders criminalized people going out of their places of abode,” amounting to a “collective seizure of the liberty of movement of the entire population of California,” the lawsuit claims.
It is one of several court challenges statewide that seek to nullify the pandemic stay-home orders restricting various aspects of commercial and civic activity. Many of the suits were filed by the Center for American Liberty, a conservative nonprofit suing Newsom’s administration over myriad aspects of the statewide shelter-in-place order.
The Bryants also contend that their business is operating lawfully because they’ve implemented several precautions to prevent viral spread and because their stores sell sanitary products and other essential items, which they say they have always stocked.
According to Santa Rosa police, officers warned Crossing the Jordan twice while all but essential retail outlets were shut down between March 18 and May 7, and then issued written warnings to all three Santa Rosa stores after Crossing the Jordan allegedly operated beyond the bounds of curbside pickup limits.
The Bryants and their attorney say Crossing the Jordan’s stores were offering essential products and funding the nonprofit’s essential nonretail services, though county attorneys determined that the stores were not essential.
‘Unusual situation’
Dana Bryant said attempts by Crossing the Jordan to seek clarity from local officials have been unsuccessful.
“Everything isn’t so black and white, and it falls into an unusual situation,” she said of Crossing the Jordan’s model of operations.
Michael and Dana Bryant, both raised in Rohnert Park, launched their organization in 2011 with a name inspired by the biblically significant river in the Middle East and an origin story built out of their checkered pasts. Both husband and wife have been open about their struggles with drugs and time behind bars years ago. Michael was in and out of multiple prisons for nearly nine years total, starting as a 20-year-old convicted of stealing a big rig. Dana was an inmate for about five years after robbing numerous banks in her early 20s.
“We are not proud of what we’ve done, but who we are is why we can do what we do,” Dana Bryant said. “We just never forgot where we came from.”
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