Court strikes down ban on soliciting day laborers - San Jose Mercury News
In doing so, the workers' lawyer said the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against Redondo Beach most likely put an end to similar bans in other western cities, including about 50 in California.
"It calls them all into very serious question," said Thomas Saenz, a Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund lawyer who represented the workers. Saenz said Redondo Beach was ordered to suspend the law in 2004 until the workers' lawsuit was resolved.
City officials enacted the ban because they said the workers were interfering with traffic and pedestrians.
Redondo Beach city attorney Michael Webb didn't return a phone call. The city could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case.
The ruling also struck down a Phoenix law prohibiting the political action group ACORN from soliciting donations from motorists stopped at red lights. Redondo Beach based its ban on the Phoenix law.
Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. writing for the 9-judge majority of the special 11-judge panel, said Redondo Beach's ordinance violated the workers' free speech rights and was so broad that it was illegal for children to shout "car wash" to passing drivers.
Smith said the ordinance "regulates significantly more speech than is necessary to achieve the city's purpose of improving
traffic safety and traffic flow at two major Redondo Beach intersections, and the city could have achieved these goals through less restrictive measures, such as the enforcement of existing traffic laws."A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based appeals court originally upheld the ban, but the specially convened panel of 11 judges voted 9-2 to overturn the earlier decision.
Judges Alex Kozinski and Carlos Bea dissented.
"This is folly," wrote Kozinski, who noted as many as 75 workers would congregate at a busy intersection.
"As might be expected when large groups of men gather at a single location, they litter, vandalize, urinate, block the sidewalk, harass females and damage property," Kozinski wrote. "Cars and trucks stop to negotiate employment and load up laborers, disrupting traffic."
Kozinski said it was the city's duty to protect its residents from such nuisances.
"Nothing in the First Amendment prevents government from ensuring that sidewalks are reserved for walking rather than loitering; streets are used as thoroughfares rather than open air hiring halls; and bushes serve as adornment rather than latrines," Kozinski said. "The majority is demonstrably, egregiously, recklessly wrong. If I could dissent twice, I would."
17 Sep, 2011--
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