Just days before the Great Highway is set to become a full-time car-free zone, a new lawsuit is trying to hit the brakes on the car-free conversion, saying that last November’s Prop K vote was unlawfully placed on the ballot.

Get ready, San Francisco and the Sunset District, that car-free Great Highway that SF voters approved in November is almost here. The plan after the passage of Prop K is to turn a stretch of the highway between Sloat Boulevard and Lincoln Way into an oceanfront park, and there’s even a naming contest for what to call the new park.

The park will not be opening until Saturday, April 12, and some work still needs to be done on it first.

And as such, NBC Bay Area reports that this Friday, March 14, will be the last day for cars on the Great Highway. Looking at the Great Highway schedule, we see that the closure goes into effect at 12 noon Friday. So if you ever want to drive the Great Highway again, you’ll have to get that drive in by 11:59 am Friday morning, because the stretch will be permanently closed to cars after that.

Or will it? Yesterday at 5:44 pm, SFist received a press release declaring a lawsuit to stop the Great Highway from becoming car-free. “Community leaders and residents will hold a press conference on Tuesday, March 11, 2025, to announce the filing of a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court challenging the legality of Proposition K, the recently passed ballot measure that seeks to permanently close the Upper Great Highway to private vehicles,” the press release says.

There are no names listed as speakers in the press release, only “Plaintiffs, legal counsel, and community leaders.” The 12 noon Tuesday start time of the press conference is after press time of this post. The press release came from an organization called SFUnite.org, whose website is not functional. The media contact is listed as LivableSF, which is also not a functioning website. So is this lawsuit even for real?

It’s for real, alright, as Mission Local obtained a copy of the lawsuit. Per Mission Local, it lists the plaintiffs as Matt Boschetto, who unsuccessfully ran against Myrna Melgar for District 7 supervisor last year, Great Wall Hardware store owner and car-free Great Highway critic Albert Chow, and LivableSF, whose founder Vin Budhai is co-organizer of the Recall Joel Engardio campaign.

The lawsuit argues that Prop K even being on the ballot was a violation of the age-old NIMBY tool CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act). While measures passed by voters are exempt from CEQA, the lawsuit argues that Prop K was placed on the ballot by the SF Board of Supervisors, and therefore not exempt from CEQA.

It also contends that state vehicle codes say that roads can be closed if they are “no longer needed for vehicular traffic.” But since Prop K “explicitly allows transit vehicles, emergency vehicles, official government vehicles, and other authorized vehicles to continue driving on the Upper Great Highway” in certain situations, then that undermines the claim that the highway is no longer needed.

For some background on the opponents of the new Great Highway park, a recent SF Public Press piece delves into the deep-seated bitterness of some in the Chinese American community in the Outer Sunset and elsewhere who feel their voices have been systematically ignored by politicians for decades, over this issue and others.

Car-free Great Highway supporters were immediately dismissive of the suit. “This lawsuit is just another in a long line of attempts by park opponents to overturn the will of San Franciscans,” Friends of Ocean Beach Park president Lucas Lux said in a statement provided to SFist. “Their prior attempts to bypass democratic outcomes include another failed lawsuit and multiple unanimously rejected appeals. Meanwhile, we are excited for the park to open in April so San Franciscans can begin enjoying the coastal park they voted for.”

So a lawsuit will try to stop making the Great Highway car-free. Can the plaintiffs do this by Friday? Theoretically, maybe. They could try to get an immediate injunction, which could go into place by Friday. But these car-free opponents have not yet been very public about their legal plans, so we’ll know more after their press conference today.

Related: Prop K Has Passed, Whether Sunset District Residents Like It or Not [SFist]

Image: @Scott_Wiener via Twitter