Federal Government Sued for Emergency Food Stamp Aid : Riots: Bush Administration is illegally denying assistance, class-action suit asserts. Government says existing programs are adequate to take care of needs.

The Bush Administration has illegally denied food stamps to Los Angeles riot victims entitled to them under federal emergency provisions, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court.

The class-action suit seeks to reverse a decision by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Edward R. Madigan, who has so far denied a type of emergency aid granted in the aftermath of other disasters, such as Hurricane Hugo or the Loma Prieta earthquake.

“The refusal by the federal government is not the way to rebuild and heal Los Angeles,” Mark D. Rosenbaum, general counsel of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, said at a news conference held at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Los Angeles.

Up the street, hundreds waited in line for the free food that the church has distributed daily since the riots.

“Obviously, we cannot continue indefinitely,” said the Rev. Cecil Murray, pastor of the church. “We’ll need something more programmatic, such as the food stamp program.”

In response to the lawsuit, Department of Agriculture spokesman Roger D. Runningen said, “We have not received reports that there are food shortages.” But he said the agency is “monitoring the situation on a daily basis in Los Angeles.”

Under provisions of the Federal Food Stamp Act, the secretary of agriculture can order emergency food stamp assistance to households in a disaster area if a determination is made that victims’ needs cannot be met by regular programs.

Runningen maintained that existing food-stamp programs are working. “People who are eligible are being certified,” he said. “The program is showing no signs of extreme stress.”

Extra food is being supplied to food distribution centers, 350 of them in riot-affected areas, he said. “Nutrition programs for the elderly are operating at more than 100 sites, and there are nearly 1,800 schools operating school lunch programs,” he said.

After President Bush declared Los Angeles a disaster area, both the Los Angeles County Department of Social Services and the state of California requested the aid.

The lawsuit, filed by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and the Western Center on Law & Poverty Inc., maintains that the failure to respond “violates both federal and constitutional law.” Attorneys who filed the suit said they will seek an injunction in federal court later this week to force the government to provide the emergency assistance.

“What’s happening here is a classic example of a federal agency standing on the sidelines looking down on a problem and not doing anything about it,” said Brian Patrick Lawlor of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.

Lawlor noted that 1989 victims of both Hurricane Hugo in South Carolina and the Loma Prieta earthquake in the Bay Area obtained emergency food-stamp aid.

But those situations were different, Runningen said. “Some or many of the places where people would apply were damaged or destroyed, or people who worked to certify people couldn’t get to work,” he said. “In Los Angeles, the food stamp centers are open.”

Angela Delaney, a 27-year-old South Los Angeles mother of three who is one of the plaintiffs in the suit, said much of the food she bought with her regular $194 monthly food-stamp allotment was destroyed when electricity went out during the riots.

Since then, she said, she has tried to find food in the few markets in her neighborhood that were not destroyed. But that has been hard, she said, because “stores are raising their prices.” She has been forced to turn to the food pantries, she said, such as the one at the First A.M.E. Church. “I go to the food lines like everybody else,” she said. “Half a day it takes.”

The volunteer food distributions are shouldering an unfair burden, and need to be buttressed by federal aid, said Gene Boutilier, administrator of the Los Angeles Emergency Food and Shelter Local Board. “We’ve got to get the federal governmental supplemental food-stamp program, intended for disasters like this, into this community,” he said.

“We will do everything we can to support them but not to supplant them,” Murray, the pastor at First A.M.E., said of the programs.

“We’re not asking for a bailing-out process,” Rosenbaum said. “We’re asking for the short-term assistance the law requires.”