A view of downtown Pendleton, Ore. from the North Hill neighborhood on Aug. 7, 2025.
Antonio Sierra / OPB
Update — Oct. 31, 2025: On Monday, Oct. 27, attorneys for the plaintiffs requested an injunction to halt enforcement of some of Pendleton’s resting laws pending the results of the lawsuit.
The Pendleton City Council has also scheduled a first reading for an amendment to its resting ordinance. Changes include expanding resting hours on select public properties from eight hours in the evening to 24 continuous hours.
Original story below:
A group of residents filed a lawsuit against the city of Pendleton Thursday, alleging that the city is trying to “banish” them from their hometown because they live on the streets.
Represented by two statewide nonprofits, Oregon Law Center and Legal Aid Services of Oregon, the five plaintiffs are seeking a permanent injunction on city ordinances that dictate where and how people can “rest” within city limits.
The plaintiffs said the laws discriminate against homeless people, leaving them few places to sleep at night in a city that lacks both affordable housing and temporary shelter beds.
In a statement, Pendleton Mayor McKennon McDonald called the lawsuit “unnecessary litigation.”
But for the plaintiffs, the stakes of the lawsuit are nothing short of existential.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s freezing and pouring rain, once it passes 6 a.m., there is nowhere in town you are allowed to shelter under a tent or tarp,” Laura Thornton, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “We need to be allowed to exist.”
Resting violations
The lawsuit is specifically targeting two city ordinances.
The first was passed by the Pendleton City Council in 2020. The law outlined where people could sleep outside between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. while banning them from sleeping on streets, sidewalks, alleys and other public rights-of-way.
According to the lawsuit, the law was difficult for unhoused residents to follow. Some of the properties designated for resting were gated off or contained many sidewalks and parking lots where people weren’t supposed to sleep. Violating the ordinance could result in fines and bans or criminal trespassing.
The council passed the second ordinance this past May. The law updated the last ordinance by prohibiting people from sleeping in public facilities or buildings, which included benches at bus stops.
The lawsuit argues that the city is doing all this in a community without many alternatives for people without permanent housing. The Pendleton Warming Station offers room for 26 people, but is only open during extreme heat or cold.
The Promise Inn, a shelter operated by a local nonprofit, has 37 beds but requires its residents to leave the premises during the day. Residents are also required to move out for 30 days after staying at the shelter for 90 days, according to the lawsuit.
According to McDonald, the city was actively communicating with Oregon Law Center about its concerns before the lawsuit was filed.
“We have communicated to them our agreement with points they brought to our attention as needing to be corrected in our ordinance,” she said in a statement. “Unfortunately, they have elected to abandon a process that would have allowed for collaborative resolution in favor of unnecessary litigation.”
The effects of enforcement
According to the lawsuit, Pendleton police officers issued 300 citations for resting in public to 176 people between May 2023 and May 2025.
The plaintiffs said they’ve borne some of the brunt of that enforcement.
Thornton and her wife Elizabeth Martin are both plaintiffs in the lawsuit and longtime residents. When they can’t sleep at the Promise Inn, they live on the streets, where they’ve been cited multiple times.
According to the couple, the resting ordinances are inconsistently applied. Thornton said she was cited while sitting in a park during the day, with a police officer arguing she was “resting” rather than “hanging out.” Another time, Thornton and Martin were on city property and didn’t know where else to sleep. They were ticketed for criminal trespassing for sleeping on city land.
Wilynda Wardinski is another plaintiff in the lawsuit. Wardinski alleges that a police officer approached her and told her she was not wanted in Pendleton and that the city needed to “crack down” and send homeless people to jail.
Wardinski said she suffers from sleep deprivation because she fears she may sleep past the 6 a.m. cutoff. She averages three hours of sleep per night.
In her statement, McDonald said the city had a responsibility to protect all citizens, including “those who don’t have a home in which to live.”
“While conducting its mission, the people who work for the city are expected to treat everyone with respect,” she said. “And as with all such claims, these claims will be looked into and dealt with accordingly if necessary.”
Pressure from both sides
While the Oregon Law Center is helping residents who say the city’s homelessness policies are too harsh, the city council has already heard from a community group that says the city’s policies aren’t going far enough.
A group calling itself Neighbors for a Better Pendleton spent an August city council meeting complaining about how homeless people were hurting the economy and quality of life of the downtown area. They proposed a suite of policy proposals that revolved around incarcerating and removing certain unhoused residents.
Other residents pushed back against the group, arguing that the proposals were cruel and would only work to make homelessness worse in the community.
This is not the first time Pendleton has been sued for its approach to poverty.
In 2019, the East Oregonian reported that the city reached a settlement with a local woman who had been jailed for 55 days for owing a little more than $1,000 to the municipal court. The two sides settled for $130,000.
Clarification: A previous version of this story referred to the Oregon Law Center as based in Portland. In fact, it has regional offices across the state.
