Security Measures at Courts Are Changed : Searches: Officials at federal buildings agree to let lawyers get ID cards that will allow them to pass through checkpoints with minimal screening.

Heading off a lawsuit, court officials have changed security procedures to allow attorneys through Los Angeles and Orange County federal courthouse checkpoints without removing shoes, belts and other personal items that could set off alarms.

Officials confirmed Thursday that the several hundred lawyers who are members of the Federal Bar Assn. may acquire identification cards that will enable them to enter courthouses with the same minimal screening accorded court employees.

The policy change came after a federal appeals court refused to throw out a novel lawsuit that was viewed as a serious constitutional test in some legal circles and a frivolous waste of time in others.

San Diego attorney S. Myron Klarfeld sued U.S. District Court and U.S. marshal’s officials after he was forced to remove his belt and shoes to get through metal detectors at the courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. An X-ray revealed that the shoes contained steel shanks that set off alarms.

Klarfeld wrote a letter to the court, protesting that he had been forced to tread the courthouse in his stocking feet, ridiculed by onlookers. Receiving no response, he filed suit, asking that marshals be prevented from requiring him to remove his shoes. A federal district judge dismissed Klarfeld’s claims, but the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the suit, saying the attorney’s constitutional rights against unreasonable search may have been violated.

In dissent, exasperated U.S. Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski assailed the court majority for seeming to invite frivolous suits from among the countless numbers who must pass through metal detectors. “It trivializes the important values of the 4th Amendment and rewards effete prissiness,” Kozinski wrote in an opinion joined by 10 judges.

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For his part, Klarfeld was elated Thursday upon learning of the new court search policy. He said his suit would soon be dropped. “I haven’t felt quite so good about something in quite a long time,” he said. “. . . Each time I pass through the (metal detector) I will be reminded of this effort and how it pays to hang in there even after the loss of the first round.”

Isabel Katapodis, assistant to the clerk of the District Court, said identification cards are being issued to Bar association members from Los Angeles and Orange counties. Attorneys with cards still will have to pass through metal detectors but will not have to remove personal items.

William J. James, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the association, welcomed the new program, saying it would reduce delays for attorneys regularly appearing in federal court. “Anytime you have to go through these checkpoints--whether it’s in an airport or a court--there is certainly some hassle,” he said. “It’s nice to be able to avoid that.”