Panel Won’t Order Access for Disabled at Courthouse : Jurisprudence: Ruling says cost of remodeling downtown Criminal Courts Building is prohibitive. It OKs policy of assigning handicapped jurors to other facilities.

Los Angeles County officials are not required to build improvements for the disabled at the downtown Criminal Courts Building, even though the facility has no access for them, a state appeals court has ruled.

The county’s massive 19-story complex of courtrooms, jury rooms and judges’ chambers on Temple Street is “for all practical purposes, inaccessible to a significant number of mobility-impaired persons,” the appeals court concluded Wednesday.

But the court ruled that the county was already doing its best to help disabled jurors by assigning them to jury service in other court buildings where there was already adequate access.

That alternative, the court ruled, prevents “the bankruptcy of cities, counties and states” which would otherwise be forced to “demolish or remodel all existing inaccessible facilities.”

The county had been sued by a handicapped attorney who alleges that poor access for the disabled at the Criminal Courts Building discriminates against disabled people, preventing them from serving on criminal juries.

“The only thing they haven’t done is put up a moat,” said attorney Charles Lindner, who lost a leg to cancer. Lindner said Friday that he has already appealed the ruling to the California Supreme Court.

Lindner, a criminal defense attorney, filed the suit on behalf of a client in a murder case after learning that disabled people who were picked as potential jurors were being steered away by county officials from the Criminal Courts Building.

“That struck me as a little odd--and discriminatory,” he said.

The lawsuit threatened to halt all criminal proceedings in the building until improvements for the disabled were added.

Lindner belittled the state appeals court’s argument that municipalities could be bankrupted by costly improvements. “All we’re asking is adequate parking, the removal of some turnstiles and a few other accommodations,” he said. “That’s not very much.”

But Deputy County Counsel Frederick R. Bennett, who argued the county’s case, said that the county already “goes out of its way” to use disabled jurors in buildings that have better access. He added that at the time Lindner filed his lawsuit “there was not one disabled person in the county’s jury pool.”

The suit is one of several that Lindner has filed against the county over its lack of access for the disabled. He is involved in a class-action federal lawsuit brought against Los Angeles County to challenge the lack of access in the building. And his complaints have spurred County Supervisor Gloria Molina to ask the board to develop a plan for improved access in all county buildings.

Before his most recent state lawsuit, Bennett said, Lindner filed a federal lawsuit challenging the county’s decision to evict him from a parking lot beneath the Criminal Courts Building.

Lindner claimed that two handicapped parking spaces were eliminated by the county, including one that he had used for 18 years. “I now have to have someone transport me to court instead of going myself,” Lindner said.

County officials argued that the lot was private, restricted only to judges and county employees. The only reason Lindner had been allowed to park there for years, Bennett said, was because a judge had given him private permission. When county officials bolstered security at the lot, Lindner was barred, Bennett said.

From then on, Bennett said, “he claimed we had violated his rights.”

Asked if the county might have avoided Lindner’s lawsuits by finding another space for the attorney, Bennett said: “Government entities have to treat the public the same. I don’t think we can give special privileges to those who speak the loudest.”

Said Lindner: “I started poking around and this has gone way beyond a single parking space. My question is: ‘Do our courts have the right to say to a whole class of people that they cannot come to court simply because we don’t want to let them in?”’