L.A. Joins Challenge to Prop. 187 : Immigration: Legal move comes amid debate over getting involved when many are calling for immediate enforcement. City attorney defends action as necessary.

The city of Los Angeles jumped into the legal fray over Proposition 187 on Thursday, with City Atty. James K. Hahn filing court papers to join in a federal lawsuit seeking to toss out the anti-illegal immigration ballot measure.

The move came amid continuing debate on the City Council about whether the city should get involved in court action over the initiative, particularly when many constituents are clamoring for its immediate enforcement. Hahn’s office said Thursday that the action was necessary to clarify the city’s responsibilities under the measure, which was approved by state voters last week by a 59%-41% margin.

Meanwhile, sponsors of the initiative said they were neither surprised nor dismayed by Wednesday’s issuance of a temporary restraining order by a federal judge in Los Angeles covering most portions of the sweeping measure. They added, however, that many grass-roots supporters have their phones ringing off the hooks, expressing outrage that Proposition 187 has not taken effect immediately.

“People are really offended that their vote, their will and their voice doesn’t mean anything--that the court can just tell them to stuff a sock in their mouth and tell them to shut up,” said Harold Ezell, a co-author of the measure and a former federal immigration official. “But people should not be surprised or discouraged.

“You have to go through all of this exercise of going through the courts. They did it with Proposition 13, they did it with Proposition 103. . . . It’s just part of the system.”

The legal filings by government agencies, including the Los Angeles Unified School District, have resulted in a strong backlash from voters. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors backed away from undertaking a similar suit and proponents of the ballot measure announced plans for a recall drive against Los Angeles school board President Mark Slavkin.

In Sherman Oaks on Thursday night, more than 350 people packed the auditorium of Riverside Drive Elementary School to call for removal of public officials who use their official powers to mount taxpayer-funded attacks on Proposition 187.

The crowd, protesting what one speaker called “the invasion of the United States,” loudly applauded speakers who called for the ouster of Los Angeles school board members and City Council representatives.

Glenn Spencer of the Valley-based Voice of Citizens Together pledged to rewrite the three “Rs” for the Los Angeles Unified School District, which he accused of “harboring criminals.”

“Instead of reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic, it will be recall, remove and replace,” Spencer said.

Spencer’s group announced plans Wednesday to launch a petition drive to oust Slavkin, who represents the west San Fernando Valley.

Pat Cook of Woodland Hills listed for the crowd the names of current school board members and the margins by which they won election. “It’s very easy to replace these people.”

Bob Rosenberg of Woodland Hills said he is “indignant that the city officials are taking our tax money to fight something we voted for. The audacity and the arrogance of these people--elitists telling us what to do.”

Rosenberg and others said they did not object to private groups challenging the ballot measure, but said taxpayer money should not be used in that way.

Ron Prince, the head of the campaign for Proposition 187, told the group that the ballot initiative has sent a clear message to both state and federal officials, especially President Clinton. “We’re not going to allow them to overturn the will of the people.”

Although the crowd was almost all white, two African American speakers received loud applause. One was Terry Anderson from South-Central Los Angeles, who received the biggest ovation of the evening when he accused Mexican illegal immigrants of stealing jobs away from “the black man.”

Since voters approved the get-tough initiative, eight lawsuits have been filed to overturn it in state and federal courts from Sacramento to Los Angeles.

Last week, the Los Angeles City Council also voted to take legal action in an effort to overturn the ballot measure. But Wednesday, several council members began an effort to retract the vote and to instead simply ask the courts to clarify how the ballot measure should be applied by city departments.

The city’s latest action puts it on the side of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California and other civil rights groups that are attempting to overturn the initiative.

In his legal papers seeking to join the case as an intervenor, Hahn blasted the initiative in no uncertain terms, saying it is “vague, over-broad and may result in thousands of persons suffering violations of their constitutional right against discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity.”

Attorneys in Hahn’s office maintained Thursday that the tough language was necessary for the city to be allowed to enter the law case at all.

“We adopt the pleadings of the ACLU and they are asking for . . . relief (from the proposition), but our mission is to find out what the law means and what the city’s duties and obligations under it are,” said Jessica F. Heinz, the deputy city attorney who drafted the city’s legal papers.

Heinz said that the federal courts do not allow parties to simply enter litigation in a neutral position to seek answers to questions. Instead, they must show what harm they might suffer if the initiative is not clarified. “To get standing in the court we have to show that we have a real interest and a real stake,” Heinz said. “We have to let the court know there is a very real problem facing the city.”

Two law professors who are experts in federal civil procedure agreed that the city must stake out a clear position in order to intervene in the suit. The federal courts probably would ignore a simple request for clarification of the law, in the form of a friend of the court brief, said Profs. Stephen Yeazell of UCLA and Erwin Chemerinsky of USC.

City Councilman Joel Wachs, however, has argued that the City Council should reverse its earlier stand pursuing “any and all legal action to . . . set aside the provisions of Proposition 187 . . . by challenging its constitutionality.”

Wachs said he will press the City Council today to reverse that stand and “not take that activist position. That is what the public is really angry about, seeing their money used to try to overturn their action. That is what the public sees as an arrogance.”

Hours after Proposition 187’s approval, a state court judge in San Francisco temporarily blocked the educational provisions from taking effect.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge W. Matthew Byrne Jr., acting on four separate cases filed by civil rights groups and private attorneys, halted immediate enforcement of the initiative’s ban on non-emergency medical, educational and social services for illegal immigrants.

Declaring that portions of Proposition 187 raise serious federal constitutional questions, Byrne also temporarily blocked implementation of its requirement that police and government agencies report suspected illegal immigrants to immigration authorities.

Until hearings are held on requests for preliminary injunctions--which are designed to block implementation of the initiative until its legality is determined in court--the only portion that Byrne ruled could take effect is a section providing increased state penalties for the sale and use of fraudulent citizenship documents.

Byrne’s ruling came in suits brought by the civil rights groups, the Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law and two private attorneys.

In its wake, leading Proposition 187 proponents have weighed in with decidedly measured responses.

Gov. Pete Wilson, for one, said a comprehensive court process could prove beneficial to the measure’s supporters.

“I think that it is more important that there be a full and complete record before the U.S. Supreme Court actually considers the questions that have been presented by 187,” Wilson said late Wednesday.

Prince, the pro-187 leader who viewed the proceedings Wednesday, praised Byrne’s performance, even if he disagreed with the judge’s ruling.

“I was very impressed by Judge Byrne,” said Prince. “I thought his questions were fair and he certainly gave the attorney general’s representatives ample opportunity to present a case. In fact, he was almost presenting their case for them in the absence of any effort on the part of the deputy attorney general to do it himself.”

Prince termed Wednesday’s ruling a partial victory because Byrne upheld the initiative’s sections on fraudulent documents, which call for penalties of up to five years in prison for illegal immigrants who use false citizenship papers.

Prince added that he he had expected--and had made clear repeatedly during the long campaign--that the education, health and social service provisions of the ballot measure would take months or years for courts to resolve. His only surprise, he said, was that Byrne did not allow the immediate implementation of a requirement that police verify the immigration status of anyone who is arrested in California.

Earlier Thursday, proposition co-sponsor Barbara Coe, who heads the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, said the restraining order “wasn’t a surprise to supporters of 187.

Coe said she agrees with voters who do not understand why the courts would even get involved in ballot measures that win approval at the polls.

“In an ideal world, when the people spoke, that would be the end of the subject--it would be the law,” said Coe.

Those comments brought a shocked reaction from Chemerinsky, a constitutional law professor.

Times staff writer James Rainey contributed to this story.