Appeals Panel Questions Order to Build Housing at VA Campus

A federal judge may have overstepped his bounds in ordering the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to build housing at its West Los Angeles campus.

That was suggested by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard multiple appeals this week in a class-action case involving the 388-acre West L.A. VA Campus at 11301 Wilshire Boulevard, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The judge trio, while seeming to agree with a claim that the VA had failed in its duty to local veterans, raised concerns that a trial judge may have exceeded his authority with a sweeping order requiring the agency to build more homes.

The appellate case centers on a decision by U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter invalidating four leases of VA land to University of California, Los Angeles, and a K-12 school, while issuing an injunction ordering the agency to build thousands of homes for disabled veterans.

After a trial last year, Carter ordered the VA to immediately build 100 temporary housing units on campus parking lots and plan to add more temporary housing and 1,800 units of permanent housing within six years.

The 9th Circuit stayed that order after the government appealed and scheduled it for an expedited hearing. Its appeal was joined by UCLA, the Brentwood School and oil producer Bridgeland Resources.

“When you look at things that have occurred on this property, I struggle with how some of the things the VA did benefited veterans at all,” presiding Judge Consuelo M. Callahan said early in the proceeding.

“I guess the remedies here are what caused me concern, the reach of what Judge Carter [ordered].”

Department of Justice appellate attorney Daniel Winik raised numerous objections to Carter’s interpretation of federal regulations, the rules for declaring a class and the nature of a trust.

“We believe Judge Carter erred in effectively taking over control of the WLA campus,” he told the court.

Callahan boiled down the broad issues of the case: the veterans contention that the 1888 gift of the land to the federal government created a charitable trust and that the VA had failed to live up to it; and arguments that Carter may have gone too far in assuming control over the land.

Looking at the original deed, she said, she had no doubt the property was given for the benefit of the veterans and that the VA had not lived up to that trust.

But she worried that Carter’s ruling “may be coloring outside the lines and may be too broad.”

“If we leave everything in place, what is Judge Carter going to be doing for the next six years?” Callahan asked the veterans attorney, Mark Rosenbaum.

“Well, I think he is going to be busy,” Rosenbaum said. He said the judge would collaborate with VA officials.

“That’s what’s bothering me, that he is running the VA,” Callahan said. “In collaboration, but is he the final say in that? … if you get to be the ultimate decision maker, you’re running it. He’s still the king here, or the superintendent.”

— Dana Bartholomew