Narrow Ruling Anticipated on Homeless Law : Jurisprudence: State Supreme Court appears reluctant to decide constitutional issues raised by Santa Ana ordinance against sleeping on the streets.

The California Supreme Court appeared reluctant Thursday to rule on the constitutional issues raised by a Santa Ana ordinance on the homeless, prompting predictions that cities will be allowed to resume their campaigns to control those who camp or sleep on the streets.

Advocates for the homeless, discouraged by the oral arguments before the conservative-led court, surmised that the justices might uphold the anti-camping law on narrow legal grounds and refuse to settle larger constitutional questions.

Cities around the state have been passing laws aimed at removing the homeless while awaiting a determination by the high court on whether such ordinances are constitutionally sound.

“I think it is likely that the (California Supreme Court) decision won’t ultimately resolve whether a city can make it a crime to use a blanket or a sleeping bag” on public property, Harry Simon, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, said after arguing before the court.

Although the justices did not state their views on the Orange County case, their questions indicated that the high court believes a state Court of Appeal in Santa Ana might have gone too far in declaring the ordinance unconstitutional.

Attorneys on both sides of the issue said the state high court appeared to believe it is bound to decide only whether the wording of the law was unconstitutionally vague and broad, not whether its impact would be cruel and unusual punishment for the poor.

Several justices indicated that there was not enough factual evidence presented to the trial court to warrant a finding on the larger constitutional questions.

The state high court, which will rule on the case within the next few months, could send it back to Orange County Superior Court for a full hearing on the impact of the law.

Santa Ana’s 1992 ordinance prohibits people from using blankets or sleeping bags to sleep on public property. Orange County Superior Court Judge James L. Smith upheld it in April, 1993, but the Court of Appeal struck it down last February.

The city passed a second ordinance in the meantime to clear the homeless from the Civic Center area only, but has enforced neither law pending a ruling by the California Supreme Court.

Orange County Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. E. Thomas Dunn Jr., defending the law before the court, complained of peering out of his Civic Center office in Santa Ana and beholding a “shantytown” of lean-tos and campfires and people defecating and urinating in public.

“You would think you were in the middle of a sewer plant,” Dunn later told reporters.

He said that people who truly have no alternative to the streets would have a legitimate legal defense in court against the ordinance and would be spared punishment.

The ordinance, he said, is aimed at those who choose to sleep on public property rather than go to a shelter or other accommodations.

But advocates for the homeless scoffed at his assertions, contending that those who were cited under the ordinance before it was blocked had nowhere else to go. Orange County has about 975 beds in shelters for the homeless and an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 homeless people, according to the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force.

The court’s concern about whether it technically could decide the larger constitutional issues raised by the homeless advocates came “totally out of left field,” Simon said, because the city of Santa Ana had never raised such objections.