Dispute Not Child’s Play : Law: Neighbors’ ongoing complaint about day-care center has reached appellate court level. Facility operator says she’s done nothing wrong.

Socorro Jones is still wondering how a legal dispute with a few neighbors over the day-care center she runs in her rented home has reached the point that it threatens to shut her down and potentially close thousands of other centers like hers statewide.

“I don’t know what my neighbors have to fear from me,” Jones said on a recent morning as she watched over several youngsters playing with puzzles and reading books.

Her next-door neighbor, Ernest Barrett, a retired attorney, fears the state is trampling on his property rights, and is asking why a 13-year-old law that allows child-care centers in homes can circumvent deed restrictions that prohibit businesses in his neighborhood.

“Does the state own the property or do the people own the property?” he asked.

Barrett and neighbors from three other homes on Ranchwood Road in Tustin are asking a state appeals court to settle that question and others in a potentially precedent-setting case that could limit the ability of parents to find day care in their neighborhoods.

The appeal comes in response to a ruling this fall in which an Orange County Superior Court judge upheld the constitutionality of the state law and allowed Jones to continue running her day-care center, licensed by the state to handle as many as 12 children. The dispute has been brewing since 1992, less than a year after Jones opened the day-care center, when the neighbors complained to the city, then sued Jones and her landlords, Robert and June Dawson.

Although in its early stages at the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana, the case is already drawing interest from child-care officials across the state who are concerned that any change in the law could limit neighborhood day-care centers at a time of rising demand.

“We want to encourage and provide as many opportunities for parents for child care close to their neighborhoods,” said Martha Lopez, deputy director of community care licensing for the state Department of Social Services.

There are almost 38,000 residential day-care homes statewide, each able to handle as many as or 12 children depending on the license involved, Lopez said. Orange County has 2,442 licensed neighborhood day-care centers to accommodate as many as 17,352 children.

While officials say it’s difficult to estimate how many of the residential day-care homes are in neighborhoods with deed restrictions and homeowner association rules against home businesses, they believe any change in the law could have a chilling effect. The state has an estimated 20,000 homeowner associations covering communities where about 5 million people live.

Michael Paul Thomas, a Huntington Beach attorney representing Jones, said he believes this is the first time a state appeals court has been asked to interpret the constitutionality of the day-care law, which aims to “provide children in a family day care home the same home environment as provided in a traditional home setting.”

Thomas said the law, amended in 1983, voids any restrictions that would otherwise prevent family day-care homes in neighborhoods. He said he believes the state has shown the compelling interest needed to legally establish such a law.

“What’s more important to our society than our children?” Thomas asked. “That’s the future.”

But neighbors pursuing the suit say they feel the issue is one of property rights, and playing by the rules they all agreed to upon signing their deed restrictions, or CC&Rs.; (The neighborhood’s homeowners association, the Bellewick Community Assn., is not involved in the lawsuit.)

*

Janet S. Hart, who lives two doors from Jones, said she had no idea about the child-care center until she started seeing extra cars on her street.

“We bought this house in a residential neighborhood,” said Hart, who has lived in the neighborhood for 19 years. “We just don’t want to live in a commercial neighborhood with this auto and foot traffic.

“Our home is our sanctuary. It’s where we live. We don’t do business here. . . . We played by the rules. We hope other people will too.”

Paul B. Witmer Jr., one of two lawyers representing the neighbors, said he believes the main issue in the case is whether the law can be applied retroactively and void deed restrictions that existed before its passage in 1981.

Finding a day-care center next door wasn’t what Barrett “bargained for when he bought the property,” Witmer said. “He thought he was going to have a nice quiet home.”

During a non-jury trial before Superior Court Judge William F. McDonald this fall, the neighbors argued unsuccessfully that the state law violates the state and federal constitutions because it represents a taking of property without just compensation. They also contended that the law interferes with the property and contractual rights created through their deed restrictions.

Before filing the lawsuit in 1992, the neighbors complained to the Tustin City Council. But other than making sure municipal codes are being met, city officials said they were bound by the state law. City officials also said the day-care center did not violate any municipal codes involving such things as traffic, parking and noise.

Jones, 59, who got into the day-care business a decade ago at another house as a means of supporting her own seven children, said the years of dispute have been frustrating. The controversy has even kept her own children away at times, she said, because they are afraid the neighbors will complain about their cars.

“The one thing I truly don’t understand is why are they going after me,” Jones said. “I have this business because the state allows it.”

*

Jones said she doesn’t believe she’s done anything wrong, or that her day-care center has been a nuisance to anyone. The three-bedroom home she has rented since 1991 sits at Ranchwood Road and Irvine Boulevard, a four-lane thoroughfare that Jones said generates constant traffic noise on its own. Jones said many of the children she cares for are siblings, meaning at most maybe seven cars coming and going in the morning and evening each weekday.

Jim and JoLynn Bumiller, both lawyers who have two children in her care, said they offered free legal help to Jones and believe she has a strong case.

Jim Bumiller said his children love the attention they get at Jones’ home, and he would hate see that type of care restricted for himself and others. “I think a lot of people will be looking to it (the court’s decision),” he said.

Abby Cohen, managing attorney for the Child Care Law Center, a statewide advocacy group based in San Francisco, said she is amazed that the neighbors have pushed the case so far. “Most people, when they find out about the state law, settle their” disputes, she said.

Cohen said she likes to remind people that the purpose of single-family zoning, as spelled out in a landmark 1926 U.S. Supreme Court case (Euclid v. Ambler), was to create “safe havens for raising children.”

“Child care is appropriately viewed as an essential community service,” she wrote in a family day-care zoning guide for city officials published by the National League of Cities. “The overwhelming need for a greater supply of affordable, high-quality child care has been thoroughly documented in all communities, whether urban, suburban or rural.”

Arguments before the appeals court are expected later this year.