Loitering Law Is Ruled Too Vague : Lancaster: Judge sides with defendants charged after sweeps of shopping center parking lots.

Lancaster’s city ordinance against loitering outside businesses is unconstitutionally vague, a Municipal Court judge ruled Thursday.

The decision by Antelope Municipal Court Judge Frank Jackson effectively halts enforcement of the law and throws into limbo criminal charges against 15 alleged violators whose cases had been consolidated in arguments before the court.

Jackson sided with the county public defender’s office, which represented 13 of the 15 defendants. The district attorney’s office said it was considering an appeal.

The charges, mostly against young adults, stemmed from sheriff’s sweeps this fall of shopping center parking lots in Lancaster. Jackson did not dismiss the misdemeanor charges involved. But that could be the result unless the district attorney’s office wins an appeal, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors and sheriff’s officials said they will voluntarily stop enforcing the ordinance until they prevail with an appeal or get the Lancaster City Council to redraft the law to comply with Jackson’s ruling.

The judge held that the city’s ordinance was too vague because it did not give adequate warning of what conduct would be illegal. Because the law prohibited loitering, but not other specific actions such as blocking entrances, Jackson said it also could have outlawed window shoppers.

Prosecutors said Jackson’s decision applied only to the cases before him and does not legally prevent them from continuing to bring other loitering cases. But prosecutors said doing so at this point would be fruitless.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Foltz said that in similar cases elsewhere, courts usually have held that some other behavior must occur in addition to loitering for the conduct to be illegal. The law in neighboring Palmdale, for instance, combines prohibitions against loitering with other specific actions.

But Foltz said the district attorney’s office still believes Lancaster’s law is adequate.

He said most, if not all, of the 15 cases stemmed from citations issued to crowds of young adults who had been gathering at the Albertson’s shopping center at 30th Street West and Avenue L in Lancaster, drawing complaints from merchants and nearby residents.

Prosecutors and sheriff’s officials could not estimate the number of Lancaster loitering cases that had been resolved in court before Thursday’s ruling or others that might be pending.