Amusement Park Settles 2 Rights Suits : Magic Mountain Agrees to Alter Screening Policy

Six Flags Magic Mountain and the ACLU on Friday settled two lawsuits that had accused the Valencia amusement park’s security guards of unjustly barring two families from the park because they are Latinos.

Under the settlement, Magic Mountain slightly revised its screening policies, but those changes had nothing to do with allegations made in the lawsuits, said Sherrie Bang, a park spokeswoman. “We are happy to have this behind us,” she said.

Neither Magic Mountain nor the two families, both named Hernandez, admitted wrongdoing in the accord.

Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union could not be reached Friday.

Magic Mountain did agree to pay 10 individuals amounts ranging from $250 to $500. But the small amount of the payments shows that the crux of the dispute was not ethnic discrimination but Magic Mountain’s security procedures, Bang said.

“Integral to the settlement was that the ACLU had an opportunity to review our admission policies,” Bang said.

The suits were filed in April and July of last year in Los Angeles Superior Court by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California. They sought unspecified damages for two families--one from San Gabriel, the other from Hawthorne--who visited the park separately in April and July of 1987.

The families claimed that security guards accused them of being gang members because they were Latinos and because of the clothes they wore. Juan Hernandez, 14, of Hawthorne said guards told him that a black polo shirt he wore, bearing the words MIDNIGHT CRUZERS on the back, resembled gang clothing.

Magic Mountain officials said they do not discriminate. Security guards screen crowds to weed out possible gang members and troublemakers, they said. The guidelines were adopted after six people were stabbed and 21 arrested after a fight involving three San Fernando Valley gangs broke out in the park in 1985.

Under these guidelines, security guards could consider the display of anarchist symbols or obscenity on clothing as criteria for refusing entry into the park. Park officials agreed to strike these two criteria from the guidelines after the ACLU complained they violated constitutional protections of free speech, Bang said.

Those criteria, obscene or anarchist symbols, were not involved in barring the Hernandez families, Bang said.

To prevent gang members from circumventing the screening process, the park refuses to discuss what clothing or other symbols or conduct remain in the guidelines. However, the criteria have been adopted on advice from law enforcement agencies, Bang said.

Bang said that because the ACLU has reviewed the remaining guidelines, Magic Mountain is confident that they are not discriminatory.