Sidewalk Ordinance Records

In 1993 and 1994, City Council passed several "civility laws" at the urging of City Attorney Mark Sidran. One of these laws - Ordinance 116885, as amended by Ordinance 117103 - banned sitting or lying on the sidewalk in the downtown area from 7 am to 9 pm. Sarah McConahy, a formerly homeless youth, and John Hoff, an advocate for Seattle's homeless, were cited under the law. When they both were found to have violated the ordinance, they joined in an appeal to challenge the law in court. The state Court of Appeals and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the ordinance did not violate constitutional rights, and the state Supreme Court declined to take up the case, allowing the law to stand.

This series documents the enactment of the "civility" ordinances along with the litigation that followed. Box 4 contains mostly correspondence and memos regarding the development of the law, including a great deal of citizen feedback. Boxes 1-3 consist of court filings and legal documents; note that there are many duplicates within these files. These three boxes have been scanned and are available in Digital Collections. An index lists most of the documents in these three boxes. Where documents in a set of scans can be matched with the index, the index range is included in the folder title.