SANTA ANA, Calif. – A team of legal organizations applauded the city of Laguna Beach today for agreeing to settle a lawsuit over its treatment of disabled homeless people. The settlement agreement marks a significant shift away from the criminalization of homeless people and toward recognition of their membership in the community.

Under the agreement, the city’s police officers will not cite, arrest or harass people under state law simply for sleeping in public places, as long as there are no reasonable public health or safety concerns. The agreement also establishes a process for sealing, expunging or destroying citations that were written, and convictions that were obtained, under the city’s “anti-sleeping” ordinance. The city had already repealed key portions of the ordinance after being sued in December by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the law firm of Irell & Manella LLP, and Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine law school.

“Laguna Beach’s action on this issue is a model for other cities in how to seek legal, compassionate and economically sound ways of eliminating homelessness, not the homeless,” said ACLU/SC Executive Director Ramona Ripston. “We applaud the mayor and the City Council for setting up a committee to further study and address the root causes of homelessness, and we’re hopeful that out of that process will come housing and services that will end homelessness once and for all in Laguna Beach.”

Andra Barmash Greene, the managing partner of Irell & Manella LLP’s Newport Beach office and co-counsel in the case, pointed out that the process for sealing, expunging or destroying citations and convictions was a key part of the settlement agreement, which will remain in effect for three years. "Citations and fines can exacerbate homelessness.They affect an individual’s ability to renew a driver’s license and receive state benefits, and often lead to arrest warrants and incarceration," Greene said. "We’re particularly pleased that the plaintiffs in this case will be able to resolve improper infractions on their records and avoid this destructive cycle, which unfortunately works to perpetuate homelessness in Laguna Beach and other cities.”

The lawsuit was filed after discussions between city officials and attorneys representing the homeless failed to yield necessary revisions to Laguna Beach’s policy toward homeless persons. In early 2008, the Laguna Beach City Council adopted recommendations from the city’s own homeless task force -- whose members included the current and former city mayors – supporting better mental-health care and transitional housing services for homeless people. Unfortunately, the City Council did not act on these recommendations, and instead continued harassing, citing and arresting homeless people in Laguna Beach

The city task force’s report concluded that there are an estimated 45 to 55 homeless people living in Laguna Beach. More recent estimates put the figure closer to 70. Nearly all the homeless people in Laguna Beach meet the definition of “chronically homeless” – people who have been homeless repeatedly or for an extended period of time, and have mental or physical disabilities, the task force noted.

“This settlement agreement builds on the city’s repeal of its anti-sleeping ordinance, and is one more important step toward decriminalizing homelessness in Laguna Beach,” said Hector Villagra, director of the Orange County office of the ACLU/SC. “It sets the stage for the city to adopt long-term strategies to end homelessness, rather than quick fixes to keep the homeless out of sight. We hope other cities will take note of this sensible approach.”

A new emergency standard proposed by California’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board to address the threat of heat-related illness to farmworkers and other outdoor laborers is totally inadequate, and only underscores the state’s failure to provide an effective system to protect the workers on whom California’s huge agricultural industry depends, a team of legal groups charged today.

In public comments made in Los Angeles and Sacramento, attorneys from the ACLU of Southern California and the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP joined representatives of the United Farm Workers of America and field laborers in calling on Cal/OSHA to make crucial modifications to regulations requiring shade and water for workers, and to focus on preventing and correcting violations by employers.

“We’re glad that the state has finally acknowledged the urgent need to act. But today's announcement is just a baby step that won't increase worker protection,” said Catherine Lhamon, assistant legal director for the ACLU of Southern California. “Years of farmworker deaths and injuries from the heat show that what we need are regulations without exceptions and loopholes, and strong enforcement, not minor changes to a broken system that employers already flout with impunity.”

“Cal/OSHA must cut out the exceptions and loopholes now, and focus on investigating employer compliance, imposing fines and other sanctions where appropriate, collecting fines that have been levied, and creating a role for workers in seeing that regulations are enforced,” Lhamon added.

Heat-related illness and deaths are a threat every year in California’s agricultural fields, where 650,000 farmworkers labor in temperatures that regularly exceed 100 degrees as they help produce and harvest crops that feed consumers from Malibu to Massachusetts. Eleven workers have died of heat-related causes since new state regulations became effective in 2005, with six workers dying last summer alone.

Among the latter was Audon Felix Garcia, 42, who died after spending hours loading grape boxes into a truck in 112-degree weather in Kern County. An ambulance was called to his work site, but he could not be revived. His core body temperature was 108 degrees when he died.

In recent weeks, as California’s withering summer heat arrived, Cal/OSHA discovered that a disturbing number of employers were not complying with the 2005 regulations. However, the agency’s proposed solution is totally insufficient. Among other things, it is full of exceptions and vague language, allowing employers to comply with high-heat procedures only “to the extent practicable,” for example, and enabling them to not provide shade when doing so would be “infeasible.”

In addition, the proposal states that a shaded area must be provided no more than five minutes’ walk away for all workers when temperatures exceed 85 degrees F. But shade that is five minutes’ walk away would require workers -- who are paid by the amount they produce -- to take repeated breaks of at least 15 minutes throughout the day. In other words, they would lose wages as they walk back and forth between shade areas and work sites in the full summer heat.

Farmworkers, like all workers in California, are entitled under the state Constitution to a comprehensive workplace safety system that protects them from workplace injury and death. Similarly, farmworkers and all other California workers are statutorily entitled to Cal/OSHA enforcement of health and safety regulations. But the rampant failures of that enforcement are well-documented and longstanding.

“It’s time for all Californians to let the state know that worker safety is a basic human right that can truly be protected only through better enforcement and regulations, including incentives for employers to comply,” said Brad Phillips, an attorney with Munger, Tolles. “We’ve been asking the state for some time to take immediate action, and we continue to hope that resolving this issue in the courts won’t be necessary. However, we’re prepared to go to court if that’s what is necessary to achieve a system that truly safeguards farmworkers and others who work outdoors.”

Employers routinely avoid paying fines levied against them for violations because the state fails to ensure that the fines are paid. And fines imposed – even in cases of worker heat-related death – have been as low as $250.

“Six farmworkers died of heat last summer, and similar numbers of farmworkers died in 2005,” said Arturo S. Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers of America. “The changes the governor is proposing would not have saved any of the people who died last summer. The UFW has decades of work on behalf of farmworkers, which gives us practical understanding of the tools farmworkers need to survive the rigors of their labor. We know that most meaningful worker protections are only accomplished when a powerful group of thousands and thousands of workers come together to demand what is their basic right. Those are the voices that the UFW has been representing and will continue to fight for.”

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – A three-judge panel today upheld the Los Angeles Police Department’s use of Special Order 40 – a decades old policy prohibiting officers from using immigration status to initiate investigations. The decision by the California Court of Appeals strikes a balance between immigrants’ rights to equal protection and officers’ duty to protect communities.

The panel affirmed a lower court’s determination that Special Order 40 is constitutionally sound, and sided with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which fought the lifting of the policy on behalf of community groups representing domestic violence victims and day laborers. The case arose out of Los Angeles’ resident Harold Sturgeon’s 2006 lawsuit to stop the city from spending money on enforcing Special Order 40.

Special Order 40 was adopted in 1979 by then-LAPD Chief Daryl Gates as a way to encourage immigrants to cooperate with police and build community trust. Police chiefs and experts throughout the country agree that local enforcement of federal immigration law is neither consistent with police authority under federal law nor does it foster trust among immigrant communities.

The following statement can be attributed to Belinda Escobosa Helzer, ACLU/SC staff attorney.

“Immigrants in Los Angeles no longer have to worry that they will be forced to choose between personal safety and their future. The court understands, as does the LAPD, that stripping away Special Order 40 would have not only violated the law but been a grave mistake in a city with such deep immigrant roots. With Special Order 40 securely intact, beat cops can continue to build strong trust with community members, residents can report crimes without fear of being deported, and Los Angeles – with all its diversity - will be a safer place. I hope this will be the final chapter in what has frankly been a misguided challenge to a sound policy.”