(Beth Clifton collage)
No more dumping kittens or cats with clear signs of ownership, orders judge
SAN DIEGO, California––San Diego Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal on June 9, 2025 ended the long-running “cat control trial of the century” with a final ruling that the San Diego Humane Society has sufficiently amended how it handles cats found at large to comply with California state law.
Judge Bacal issued a preliminary ruling against how the San Diego Humane Society practiced “return to field” cat population management in December 2024.
When the San Diego Humane Society continued to practice “return-to-field” without amendment, Judge Bacal reinforced her previous ruling with a preliminary injunction in February 2025.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Return-to-field vs. TNR
Judge Bacal’s final verdict concludes a case brought against the San Diego Humane Society in May 2021 by the Southern California animal rescue charities Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors.
The case from the beginning focused on defining the difference between “return-to-field” and TNR, two superficially similar animal control techniques.
TNR, short for trap-neuter-return, is also sometimes called TNVR, to emphasize that vaccination is an essential part of it.
(Beth Clifton collage)
ABC: TNR for street dogs
TNR, introduced by Walt Disney Inc. in 1955 to manage feral cats at Disneyland, has become popularized as a feral cat control method since circa 1990.
The same basic idea, as a method of managing street dog populations, was separately introduced by the Blue Cross of India in 1966 under the name ABC, for Animal Birth Control.
Whether called TNR, TNVR, or ABC, the technique is now legally mandated in India and several other nations, and is commonly practiced worldwide.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Return-to-field”
“Return-to-field,” by contract, is the practice of releasing tame, friendly cats and kittens, with clear indications of having been pets, back where they were found, on the theory that they will find their own way home.
“Return-to-field,” promoted by the no-kill foundation Maddie’s Fund and the Best Friends Animal Society, was introduced less than a dozen years ago by Kate Hurley of the Koret Shelter Medicine program at the University of California, Davis campus.
Hurley testified at trial for the San Diego Humane Society.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Spin-doctoring
Though Judge Bacal’s preliminary verdict compelled the San Diego Humane Society to substantially amend its “return-to-field” procedures, San Diego Humane Society media contact Nina Thompson on June 10, 2025 issued a statement proclaiming the society “delighted with” Bacal’s final decision.
“In her ruling,” Thompson said, “Bacal explicitly affirmed the legality of the organization’s lifesaving Community Cat Program.”
Thompson did not mention, however, that the San Diego Humane Society Community Cat Program as result of the lawsuit is now not the same program that it was when Bacal ruled in December 2024 that it violated California Penal Code section § 597s.
That section of the California Penal Code states simply that, “Every person who willfully abandons any animal is guilty of a misdemeanor.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
San Diego Humane Society statement ignores court-mandated policy changes
“The San Diego Humane Society will continue operating its program exactly as they have been since February 2025,” Thompson crowed.
“The ruling outright rejects,” Thompson said, “plaintiff’s request that a cat’s socialization status be considered when determining a cat’s eligibility for the program – the issue at the heart of the case all along.”
Actually, pointed out both City News Service and the Times of San Diego, “Bacal wrote that the humane society has since revised its Community Cat Program policies in a way that now complies with state law.
“Those revisions include new considerations that San Diego Humane Society officials should take into account when considering whether a cat has an owner, including if the cat has indentations around his or her neck to indicate the recent presence of a collar or signs that the feline has received recent veterinary or medical treatment. If sufficient signs of ownership are found, the cat should be admitted into a shelter, the ruling states.”
Bryan Pease. (Beth Clifton collage)
“Claiming to have ‘won’ case they just lost”
Said San Diego Humane Society president Gary Weitzman, via Thompson, “This ruling is a resounding endorsement of our evidence-based, expert-endorsed, lifesaving approach to community cats. It allows us to continue providing critical medical care, spay/neuter, and safe return for unowned cats while reserving shelter space for animals who truly need it.”
Responded plaintiffs’ attorney Bryan Pease, “True to form, the San Diego Humane Society is now claiming to have ‘won’ the case they just lost, in which the court put them under a permanent injunction to stop their unlawful business practices of dumping cats on the streets without food, water, or monitoring unless there was ‘verifiable proof’ of prior ownership.
“The only reason the court found their current practices to be lawful ,” Pease pointed out, “is that we have had them under a preliminary injunction,” now made permanent, “since February.
(Beth Clifton collage)
San Diego Humane Society enjoined from reverting
“For nearly five years,” Pease continued, “the San Diego Humane Society had been releasing virtually all cats brought in outdoors with no monitoring or caretakers, to be eaten by coyotes, killed by cars, or to starve and dehydrate to death.
“This week’s ruling makes the injunction permanent, prohibiting the San Diego Humane Society from going back to its old policy,” Pease emphasized.
“This is a major victory for the plaintiffs and the public,” Pease assessed, “including the many witnesses who testified at trial, in holding San Diego Humane Society accountable for its illegal actions in abandoning cats outdoors.
“The court found that the San Diego Humane Society’s actions were illegal and issued a permanent injunction requiring them to admit stray and abandoned cats into the shelter for care and adoption services,” Pease repeated, “whom the San Diego Humane Society previously would have dumped out on the street like garbage.”
(See San Diego cat control trial verdict & L.A. shelter fine expose “no kill” failures.)
Ed Boks & friend. (Beth Clifton collage)
“Not a vindication,” agrees Ed Boks
Agreed Animal Politics blogger Ed Boks in a June 12, 2025 installment entitled Legal Defeat, PR Victory: How the San Diego Humane Society Spun a Court Rebuke Into a Win, “Far from affirming SDHS’ past practices, Judge Katherine Bacal found that the organization’s former intake protocols were unlawfully narrow, resulting in the release of cats with clear signs of ownership. It was only after SDHS revised those protocols—under legal pressure and in the midst of litigation—that the court deemed the program compliant with state law. This was not a vindication. It was a judicial intervention that compelled reform.
“The court declined to require the San Diego Humane Society to admit all “friendly” cats or restrict releases to registered caretakers,” Boks conceded, “ruling that sociability is not a legally relevant factor in determining abandonment under California law.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Prior requirement was unlawfully restrictive”
However, Boks continued, “The court held that the San Diego Humane Society’s prior requirement for ‘verifiable proof of ownership’ was unlawfully restrictive. By demanding hard evidence—like registered microchips or documented owners—the San Diego Humane Society excluded cats who showed clear signs of prior ownership, such as being sterilized without an ear-tip or having an unregistered chip.
“The implication is significant: shelters cannot use rigid intake policies to turn away animals who by law must be sheltered. The ruling clarifies that objective signs of ownership—however incomplete—must now trigger a legal duty to admit the animal,” instead of placing the animal in a neuter/return program, which by definition is meant to accommodate self-sufficient feral animals.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Now required to admit kittens
“The revised protocol now requires the admission of all kittens under 12 weeks of age,” Boks noted, “and mandates staff err on the side of sheltering kittens up to six months old unless they are clearly able to survive on their own.
“Importantly,” Boks wrote, “ the court did not reject TNR programs outright. Instead, it drew a necessary legal line—upholding the release of truly unowned, free-roaming, feral cats while prohibiting shelters from using TNR as a loophole to abandon socialized or formerly owned animals.
“This distinction is critical: the ruling helps preserve TNR’s original purpose—reducing feral cat populations humanely—without allowing shelters to offload their legal and moral responsibilities by co-opting this important program.”
[See Best Friends Animal Society cofounder and former CEO Gregory Castle, 83.] (Beth Clifton collage)
“Institutional denial & defection of responsibility”
Concluded Boks, who for more than 30 years headed the animal care and control agencies serving Maricopa and Yavapai counties in Arizona, New York City, and Los Angeles, “What stands out most in the aftermath, however, is the San Diego Humane Society’s response.
“Rather than acknowledge the court’s intervention and the reforms it compelled, the organization doubled down on its public relations narrative, seeking to transform a legal correction into a public relations victory.
“The attempt to rebrand a legal rebuke as validation mirrors a growing trend in the animal welfare world,” Boks lamented, combining “institutional denial and deflection of responsibility.
(See Cold, hard evidence re small mammals missing from humane societies.)
Beth & Merritt Clifton with friends.
“Like the Best Friends Animal Society,” Boks charged, the San Diego Humane Society “has weaponized marketing and messaging—framing any challenge as an attack on “lifesaving,” and repackaging court-mandated reforms as if they were visionary achievements.”
(See Best Friends’ no-kill initiative power play, by Ed Boks.)
Please donate to support our work:
www.animals24-7.org/donate/
The post Injunction vs. San Diego HS “return-to-field” cat practices made permanent appeared first on Animals 24-7.