The San Francisco City Board of Supervisors Tuesday night unanimously passed the Caution Against Racially and Exploitative Non-Emergencies (CAREN) Act, giving legal justification for targets of such 9-1-1 calls to bring civil lawsuits against the callers, KGO ABC-7 News reports.

The action by the board stems from a number of incidents in San Francisco and around the country where women, typically white women, have called 9-1-1 on Black people who they falsely claim are threatening or undertaking crimes.

In one case, a white woman, on a walk with her husband, called 9-1-1 on a man who was writing “Black Lives Matter” in chalk on the sidewalk in front of his Pacific Heights neighborhood house.  The woman claimed the man was committing vandalism, saying she new the person who owned the property.  The Black man, in fact, owned the property.

“The CAREN Act will expand the definition of a protected class in San Francisco to prevent false emergency calls with the specific intent to discriminate against a person or otherwise infringe the person’s rights or cause the person specified harms on the basis of the person’s race, color, ancestry, national origin, place of birth, sex, age, religion, creed, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, weight, or height,” according to a press release from the city.

The CAREN Act allows the targets of the calls to civilly sue the callers for up to $1,000 and legal fees.