Update: Cesar Chavez street-renaming can start in Fresno. When will signs be changed?

A judge has ruled in favor of the city of Fresno in a lawsuit challenging the Fresno City Council’s vote last year to rename portions of several major streets as Cesar Chavez Boulevard.

In a tentative ruling Wednesday, Fresno County Superior Court Judge Jon Skiles also denied a motion by residents and business owners seeking a preliminary injunction barring the city from moving forward with changing the street names spanning south Fresno.

The name change to honor the late farm-labor leader was approved by the City Council in March 2023 on a 6-1 vote. It covers a 10-mile stretch of California Avenue in southwest Fresno, Ventura Street in downtown and Kings Canyon Road in southeast Fresno.

The vote to rename the roads fueled an intense debate between supporters and opponents of the change and later sparked a lawsuit by 1 Community Compact, an informal coalition of business owners and residents along the streets who opposed the change based on the historic cultural nature of the street names as well as the level of inconvenience and cost they would encounter in changing their addresses on letterhead and legal and other documents.

Skiles ruled that the opponents failed to clearly lay out specific facts to support their assertions that the City Council abused its power, denied them due process, and violated their rights under the First and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

“A law is presumed to be a valid exercise of police power, and the party challenging the law has the burden of establishing it does not reasonably relate to a legitimate government concern,” Skiles wrote in his tentative ruling, citing previous appellate court rulings.

“Though (the city) argues that it had inherent authority to change the street name, (it) does not address whether the exercise of that preemptively valid exercise of power was reasonably related to a legitimate government concern,” he added. “Neither does the (lawsuit) allege any facts to support a conclusion that the (city’s) exercise of police power was manifestly unreasonable, arbitrary or capricious.”

Skiles did, however, leave the door open for opponents of the name change to amend their lawsuit. At a hearing late Thursday afternoon in which Skiles finalized the ruling, the judge allowed attorney Brian Leighton, the lawyer representing 1 Community Compact, until April 19 to refile an amended lawsuit.

Leighton said after the hearing that he will file an amended complaint and is also contemplating an appeal to the state’s 5th District Court of Appeal. “Maybe the 5th District Court of Appeal will be very excited about the city changing their street name” on Ventura Street.

“I hope the city decides they don’t want to proceed while this is up in the air,” Leighton said. “If this court or the court of appeal agrees with me … they’re going to have to change the names back. It’s going to cost the city a lot more money.”

“The problem is, the city didn’t give us a chance to weigh anything,” he added, noting that in February 2022 the City Council adopted a resolution calling for public outreach and a committee to consider the name change, but opted in March 2023 to supersede that earlier vote — a move he described in court as “arbitrary and capricious” to change the names of what he said were “historic” street names, without allowing for deliberation in the public.

“They said, ‘Screw you people. We don’t want to hear from you,’” Leighton said. “They knew that overwhelmingly the people on those streets and associated with those streets were going to say no.”

Fresno to pursue reimbursement, councilmember says

Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias, one of three council members who sponsored the name change, celebrated Skiles’ tentative ruling.

“We knew from the very beginning that this frivolous lawsuit, based on anti-Latino and anti-farmworker sentiment, was without legal merit,” Arias said.

He added that City Attorney Andrew Janz would be pursuing reimbursement from the opponents for the cost of the city’s legal fees and expenses to defend against the lawsuit.

But Leighton said he believes it is “ludicrous” for Arias to suggest “that the only reason we’re objecting is because we don’t like brown people.”

The city’s Public Works Department did not respond to a question from The Bee on when the city would begin changing road signs to reflect the Cesar Chavez name. Arias said “installations are expected to begin within the upcoming months.”

222 street signs to be changed in Fresno

The judge had previously denied an earlier motion to speed up the hearing date for a preliminary injunction against changing the street signs along the roads. In that Feb. 7 ruling, Skiles rejected an argument that allowing the city to begin changing street signs along the route before a hearing on the injunction would result in “irreparable injury.”

At its Feb. 1 meeting, the Fresno City Council awarded a $142,000 contract to Kroeker Inc. to change more than 200 street signs along the roads from Marks Avenue on the west to Peach Avenue on the east. The contract calls for removing existing street name signs along California Avenue, Ventura Street and Kings Canyon Road within the Fresno city limits. In their place, new street name signs would be installed.

A short portion of California Avenue between Hughes and West avenues, which falls outside the Fresno city limits in Fresno County’s jurisdiction, would remain unchanged. The Fresno County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in April 2023 to oppose the city’s action and reject the name change within the county’s jurisdiction.

A total of 222 street signs are to be changed, not only providing new signs for Cesar Chavez Boulevard but also replacing older signs for side streets along the route.