Wills v. City of Monterey

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JUL 20 2026 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

CYNTHIA S. WILLS, No. 25-720 D.C. No. Plaintiff - Appellant, 3:21-cv-01998-EMC v. MEMORANDUM * 0F

CITY OF MONTEREY; MONTEREY POLICE DEPARTMENT; MONTEREY HARBOR PATROL; MONTAGE HEALTH,

Defendants - Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California Edward M. Chen, District Judge, Presiding

Submitted July 15, 2026 ** 1F

Before: McKEOWN, OWENS, and LEE, Circuit Judges.

Cynthia Wills appeals the district court’s grant of judgment on the pleadings

for the City of Monterey. She challenges the judgment as a matter of law and

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). various procedural decisions. The parties are familiar with the facts, and we do not

recite them here. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm.

We review de novo a dismissal on the pleadings pursuant to Rule 12(c).

Webb v. Trader Joe’s Co., 999 F.3d 1196, 1201 (9th Cir. 2021). We review for

abuse of discretion the denial of leave to amend after a responsive pleading has

been filed, Flowers v. First Hawaiian Bank, 295 F.3d 966, 976 (9th Cir. 2002), and

the district court’s decisions regarding its local rules, Easley v. Collection Serv. of

Nevada, 910 F.3d 1286, 1289 (9th Cir. 2018). A clear-abuse-of-discretion

standard governs our review of a district court’s decision to grant a continuance.

Bearchild v. Cobban, 947 F.3d 1130, 1138 (9th Cir. 2020).

As the district court correctly explained, the Supreme Court’s decision in

City of Grants Pass v. Johnson foreclosed Wills’s claim under the Eighth

Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause. 603 U.S. 520 (2024). Per

Grants Pass, enforcing generally applicable anti-camping ordinances against

unhoused individuals is not cruel and unusual punishment. The City of

Monterrey’s ordinances are, similarly, laws that apply regardless of whether the

criminalized conduct is undertaken by, for example, a homeless individual, a

backpacker, or a protesting student. See id. at 546–47. After the pronouncement

of Grants Pass, which abrogated Martin v. City of Boise, 920 F.3d 584 (9th Cir.

2019), the district court correctly dismissed Wills’s cruel-and-unusual-punishment

2 25-720 claim. See Rivers v. Roadway Exp., Inc., 511 U.S. 298, 312 (1994) (“[O]nce the

[Supreme] Court has spoken, it is the duty of other courts to respect that

understanding of the governing rule of law.”). That the motion for judgment on

the pleadings came years into the litigation and months before trial does not alter

the district court’s duty to apply Grants Pass.

After dismissing Wills’s claim under the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and

Unusual Punishment Clause, the district court did not abuse its discretion in

denying her leave to amend to add a claim under the Excessive Fines Clause

because amendment would have been “futile.” Flowers, 295 F.3d at 976. There is

no evidence in the record that Wills was ever actually fined under the challenged

ordinances. Her alleged injury is too speculative because no actual fine has been

imposed, nor is imposition of a fine “certainly impending.” Thomas v. County of

Humboldt, 124 F.4th 1179, 1187 (9th Cir. 2024) (quoting 18 Unnamed John Smith

Prisoners v. Meese, 871 F.2d 881, 883 (9th Cir. 1989)).

Wills’s procedural arguments also lack merit. The district court did not

abuse its discretion by requiring the parties to participate in its alternative dispute

resolution (“ADR”) process. We afford “great deference” to a district court’s

implementation of local rules because “a court that creates a rule is in the best

position to apply it to the circumstances of particular cases.” Vogel v. Harbor

Plaza Ctr., LLC, 893 F.3d 1152, 1157 (9th Cir. 2018). The court reasonably

3 25-720 implemented its ADR local rules, including the timeline upon which the ADR

process was undertaken in Wills’s case, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The

district court acted within its discretion when it denied Wills’s motion to exclude

the case from the ADR process. Subsequently, Wills did not object to the

appointed mediator, the reassignment of the case to a new mediator, or the

docketed certifications that the mediation process was ongoing. She thus forfeited

objections to the mediation process’s length and the mediator’s identity.

No clear abuse of discretion occurred when the district court granted the

City’s motion to continue trial. Wills cannot show any prejudice that arose from

the continuance. See Danjaq LLC v. Sony Corp., 263 F.3d 942, 961 (9th Cir.

2001) (explaining that a showing of prejudice is required to find that a district

court abused its discretion in ruling on a trial continuance motion). Granting the

continuance in order to enable testimony by the City’s police chief, anticipated to

be one of the trial’s key witnesses, was neither “arbitrary” nor “unreasonable.”

Bearchild, 947 F.3d at 1138 (quoting United States v. Kloehn, 620 F.3d 1122, 1127

(9th Cir. 2010)).

Each party shall bear its own costs on appeal.

AFFIRMED.

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