On Feb. 2, MALDEF, the ACLU of Southern California and the National Day Laborer’s Organizing Network (NDLON) announced a lawsuit challenging the City of Costa Mesa’s anti-solicitation ordinance as unconstitutional.

The civil rights groups filed the lawsuit against the City of Costa Mesa on behalf of the Asociacion de Jornaleros de Costa Mesa and the Colectivo Tonantzin, whose members have been restricted from peaceably expressing their need and availability for employment in the city’s public areas due to the ordinance.

MALDEF President and General Counsel Thomas A. Saenz said, “Free speech, one of our most cherished rights, belongs to everyone in society. Day laborers seeking work have as much right to express themselves as the largest corporation employing hundreds of thousands. Costa Mesa’s anti-solicitation ordinance violates this vital and longstanding constitutional principle.”

The city’s anti-solicitation ordinance prohibits any person standing on a sidewalk or other public area from soliciting employment, business or contributions in any manner deemed to be intended to attract the attention of traveling vehicles. The ordinance subjects day laborers and other solicitors to a fine of $1,000 and imprisonment up to six months. The ordinance violates the day laborers’ First and Fourteenth amendments rights under the United States Constitution.

“This ordinance is simply illegal. Not only does it discriminate against day laborers but it prohibits protected speech. It’s so sweeping that it bans school children from holding car wash signs on the street or could prevent struggling businesses from using sign spinners,” said Belinda Escobosa Helzer, staff attorney for the ACLU of Southern California.

Federal courts throughout the country have consistently stricken down anti-solicitation ordinances, and have ruled in favor of preserving the free speech rights of day laborers, which allows them to continue to solicit work and provide for their families.

“Day laborers have contributed to the Costa Mesa economy for decades,” said Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. He continued, “Particularly during these tough times, the hard work they provide the community should be rewarded and not the target of destructive law enforcement practices.”

The plaintiffs, Asociacion de Jornaleros de Costa Mesa and the Colectivo Tonantzin, are represented by attorneys Saenz and Gladys Limon of MALDEF, and Escobosa Helzer, Hector O. Villagra and Peter J. Eliasberg of the ACLU of Southern California. They are joined by co-counsel, Chris Newman of NDLON.

The ACLU of Southern California is the Southland's premier defender of civil liberties and civil rights. Founded in 1923, we defend freedom and the constitutional rights of all through lobbying, litigation and education.

Founded in 1968, MALDEF is the nation’s leading Latino legal civil rights organization. Often described as the “law firm of the Latino community,” MALDEF promotes social change through advocacy, communications, community education, and litigation in the areas of education, employment, immigrant rights, and political access. Click here for more information on MALDEF.

An alliance of legal groups today filed a ground-breaking, class-action lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Probation Department and top county education officials for their total failure to provide youth in the county’s largest juvenile probation camp with basic and appropriate education, thereby denying them the legally mandated rehabilitative program that should prepare them to reenter society and the work force.
The suit, filed in United States District Court in Los Angeles, charges that county personnel -- including administrators and teachers at the Challenger Memorial Youth Center in Lancaster -- have in some instances thrown worksheets under the door of students’ cells in lieu of classroom instruction, denied all education services when children ask for help or to use the restroom, and systematically denied students access to appropriate instruction and the required minimum school day.
The result of a months-long investigation by the legal groups who brought the lawsuit, the complaint details one recent instance of a young man, incarcerated in county probation camps for most of his high school years, who was awarded a high school diploma despite being unable to read or write. It also alleges that administrators and teachers directed students to leave classrooms to perform tasks such as painting buildings and removing weeds, while billing the state for instructional days as if these students were in class.
The Challenger center consists of six camps and a single school that serves about 650 students. It has been the target of a Department of Justice investigation over mistreatment and poor supervision of students, and was cited as having a “broken” school system in a 2009 Los Angeles County Probation Commission report. The lawsuit filed today goes beyond these findings and reveals startling new details about how county agencies and officials have abdicated their core responsibility of providing education to youths forced to attend school at Challenger.
Named as defendants in the lawsuit are the Los Angeles County Probation Department, the superintendent of the county’s Office of Education, the director of that agency’s juvenile court schools, and Challenger’s current principal. Counsel in the lawsuit are Public Counsel, the Disability Rights Legal Center, the ACLU’s national office and the ACLU of Southern California.
Mark Rosenbaum, chief counsel for the ACLU/SC, said “the conscience-shocking practices at Challenger are among the most egregious failures to deliver education and rehabilitative services to incarcerated youth ever documented in the nation, turning out juveniles who are functionally illiterate, unable to fill out job applications or medical forms, read menus or newspapers or vote in elections. The lives of these young people matter, yet the county is releasing them in conditions which all but assure their failure to meaningfully reintegrate, having been denied even a semblance of an education for years upon years. This is a system out of control, with no accountability and no concern for the children under its charge.’’
All three of the plaintiffs named in the lawsuit, like many other students at Challenger, experienced unlawful removals that prevented them from attending class numerous times. Challenger school staff refused to allow these decisions to be questioned or appealed, depriving the students of their due-process rights as well as the opportunity to learn.
“The students at Challenger deserve, and are legally entitled to, an education,” said Laura Faer, director of the Children’s Rights Project at Public Counsel Law Center. “What they get instead is abuse, retaliation and needless punishment. These actions are the hallmarks of an institution that consigns children to a life in the criminal justice system, which is exactly the opposite of what it’s supposed to do. This is the moral equivalent of placing a child in handcuffs and throwing away the key.”
“Put simply, the youth at Challenger are not being given a chance,” added Shawna Parks, legal director of the Disability Rights Legal Center. “It is time to stop these children from being treated like they are throw-away kids. The agencies we have sued today have both a moral and legal obligation to change their practices, and this is their opportunity to do it."
Among other things, the lawsuit seeks to compel the county to provide intensive reading and writing services to current, former and future students at Challenger who were or are unable to read or write fluently; and to prevent county officials from excluding students from classrooms without providing them with notice and an opportunity to challenge the basis for their removal.
"The failure to provide an adequate education to detained youth, many of whom are youth of color, only sets them up for failure and increases the odds that they will remain trapped in the school-to-prison pipeline for life," said Catherine Kim, staff attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program. "We have a particular responsibility to ensure that our most vulnerable children be rehabilitated and prepared to successfully reintegrate into mainstream society.”