A federal judge has set the stage for a possible trial next year in a lawsuit challenging leases of land on West L.A.’s Veterans Affairs’ campus to UCLA and a private school and the slow progress of the VA’s promise to build housing for homeless veterans.
In a tentative ruling he warned he may change, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter denied motions to dismiss key portions of the class-action lawsuit that seeks to declare the leases illegal and compel the VA toexpeditiously provide housing for thousands of homeless veterans.
Carter handed out the pre-written tentative ruling following a 3½-hour hearing Monday in which, he said, arguments by lawyers representing the veterans and the VA had caused him to “rethink the entire jurisprudence.”
Without indicating which way he might have been swayed, Carter gave the parties until Sept. 29 to respond to the tentative ruling before he makes it final.