City to place rule on hold

The city of Costa Mesa will put a halt to enforcing its solicitation ordinance, City Atty. Kimberly Hall Barlow confirmed Tuesday night.

An attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday that the city has agreed to the moratorium until the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rules on another case challenging a similar ordinance in Redondo Beach.

“While we believe that our ordinance is legally enforceable, there are other considerations, and one of those is the cost of litigation,” Barlow said. The more prudent plan, she said, is to let the Redondo Beach case proceed before making any changes.

In exchange, the ACLU of Southern California, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which recently filed a lawsuit on behalf of their clients claiming that Costa Mesa’s ordinance is unconstitutional, will temporarily hold off on pursuing the case, the ACLU lawyer said.

Costa Mesa agreed to a moratorium on its solicitation law pending a decision by the federal appellate court on a case challenging the city of Redondo Beach’s solicitation ordinance, officials with the ACLU and MALDEF said in a news release.

“This is definitely a victory for us that they have agreed not to enforce this ordinance,” said Belinda Escobosa Helzer, an attorney with the ACLU’s Orange County office.

Last month, the civil rights groups filed the lawsuit against the city on behalf of two groups, the Assn. of Day Laborers of Costa Mesa and the Tonantzin Collective.

Although the lawsuit alleges that the ordinance violates job seekers’ constitutional rights to free speech, it came as a direct response to an undercover police operation that resulted in the arrest of 12 men who were looking for jobs at three sites.

After promising the day laborers $8 an hour, the police officers cited them for violating city law. The men were deported within two weeks of their arrest after police discovered they had entered the country illegally.

Police Chief Christopher Shawkey has said that the police’s undercover operation was a result of more than 100 complaints about day laborers from residents.

“The litigation only targets the language of the ordinance, although it’s clear that they are enforcing it primarily against day laborers,” Helzer said.

Costa Mesa’s ordinance prohibits anyone from actively soliciting in public streets. It states, “It shall be unlawful for any person to stand on a street and actively solicit employment, business or contributions from any person in a motor vehicle traveling along a street.”

Barlow has said that while solicitors can hold up signs asking for work, they can’t “actively solicit” by waving their signs or arms in a way that distracts drivers.

In 2006, the city of Redondo Beach appealed after losing a similar case to day laborers who claimed that the city’s ordinance was targeting them.

“There’s an indication from the success of Redondo Beach that in the trial court that ordinances like this are unconstitutional and you know the city should have recognized that when the decision in Redondo Beach came down in 2006, but instead continued to aggressively enforce what is questionably an unconstitutional ordinance,” Helzer said.