CA lawmaker files federal civil rights suit after 2025 Sacramento DUI allegation
State Sen. Sabrina Cervantes is suing the city of Sacramento and its police department in Sacramento federal court accusing its officers of false arrest and fabricating evidence after she was investigated for and ultimately cleared of DUI charges last May.
Attorneys for the Southern California lawmaker announced the federal civil rights lawsuit Monday nearly a year after Cervantes was detained and cited by Sacramento police after she was injured in a traffic collision near the city’s midtown last May. Cervantes filed a government claim last year with the city of Sacramento, her attorneys said. That claim was denied in October, documents show, prompting the suit.
“This case is about the abuse of power,” said Cervantes’ attorney James Quadra, in a statement Monday announcing the lawsuit. “Officers ignored the facts, fabricated evidence, and tried to turn a victim into a criminal. Defendants’ conduct violated the law and they must be held accountable.”
Sacramento police officials reached Monday said the department will not comment on pending litigation.
Cervantes’s vehicle was broadsided at 14th and S streets in the May 2025 collision, Sacramento police said. A private party took the Riverside representative to Kaiser Permanente South Sacramento for treatment where she was cited. Cervantes said she was “accosted” by officers at the hospital. Sacramento police denied claims of abusive treatment.
Officers “observed objective signs of intoxication” at the hospital before citing the lawmaker, police officials said in a statement following the incident.
Cervantes denied the allegations. Her emergency room detention by police “was deeply distressing and left me even more shaken,” she said at the time. Cervantes later produced pages of medical records from physicians that showed her blood-alcohol level registered at 0.01%, along with results of a drug screen that showed undetectable levels of controlled substances.
Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office, in May 2025, announced it would not file criminal charges saying toxicology reports “were negative for any measurable amount of alcohol or drugs.”
“Sacramento police officers lacked probable cause yet pushed forward anyway, seeking a warrant to obtain a blood draw, and building a case on false statements and omissions,” Cervantes’ attorneys said in the Monday statement. “The results of the blood test were unequivocal: Senator Cervantes was completely sober, and no charges were filed.”
The lawsuit, filed Monday, goes farther, alleging arresting officers misled a Sacramento Superior Court judge to obtain the warrant, leaked false claims to reporters that the Riverside lawmaker was driving intoxicated and that her arrest was motivated by discriminatory bias and her work in the state legislature.
Cervantes, who is LGBT and Latina, is chair of the Senate Elections Committee and also sits on the Senate banking and transportation committees.
Cervantes, months before the incident, introduced a bill that would curb abuse of data gleaned by law enforcement agencies from automatic license plate readers. The bill was opposed by law enforcement agencies
“This is not only about what happened to me — it’s about accountability,” Cervantes said in her rejected claim against Sacramento last year. “No Californian should be falsely arrested, defamed, or retaliated against because of who they are or what they stand for. The abuse of power that I endured undermines public trust and cannot be ignored.”
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