Monrovia’s Daytime Curfew Struck Down

Monrovia’s tough daytime curfew ordinance--the model for dozens of anti-truancy statutes nationwide--contradicts state law and can no longer be enforced, according to a court ruling issued Thursday.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl ruled that the city ordinance allowed police to fine students whose absences were legitimate under state law, thus infringing on their rights.

In a statement, Monrovia Mayor Bob Bartlett said the city would consider appealing the injunction or amending the ordinance.

The injunction resulted from a lawsuit filed in 1997 by a coalition of private school and home-schooled children and their parents, who argued that the ordinance was unconstitutional. They said it gave police the broad right to stop any unsupervised youth on the street during school hours.

“If you’re young, you’re going to get stopped,” said plaintiff Rosemary Harrahill, who said her two sons, who were being taught at home, were stopped 22 times within nine months. “It’s a police state in Monrovia. But it won’t be anymore.”

Others complained of similar treatment, including adults who looked younger than 18 and a teenage boy who was stopped five times in one day.

But the judge did not address the plaintiffs’ complaints of harassment or the constitutionality of the law, instead focusing on specific points where the city ordinance conflicted with state law. Attorneys for Monrovia said they would consider revising the language to comply with the state Education Code.

The daytime curfew was passed in 1994 and allowed police to stop unsupervised youths between 8:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. and hand out $135 citations to truants. It won praise across the nation and even drew a laudatory visit from President Clinton. About 70 to 80 cities have since passed daytime curfews in California, with several hundred nationwide.

Michael Farris, the plaintiffs’ attorney and president of the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Assn., chose to fight the Monrovia law because he said it was the linchpin of subsequent ordinances.

“It was certainly the most prominent curfew known in the country,” he said, “and the most aggressively enforced.”

Farris said such laws are tools of martial law that violate people’s civil rights.

Although Kuhl did not rule on such implications, she wrote that it allowed a variety of situations in which a youth could be ticketed in Monrovia while being legitimately absent under state law.

She wrote, for example, that a 14-year-old minor “walking unaccompanied and with school permission to a religious service in his community [perhaps a Good Friday or Rosh Hashana service]” could be fined and required to appear in traffic court.

The Monrovia ordinance states, with few exceptions, that any minor “who is subject to compulsory education” and is found unsupervised in public during normal school hours can be cited, according to the judge. Those exempted are youngsters accompanied by a parent or guardian; those on an emergency errand, on their way to work or to a medical appointment; and those who have school permission to leave for lunch or school-related activities.

The state Education Code, however, says that a student can be excused for a variety of “justifiable personal reasons,” including funerals, religious holidays and employment conferences, Kuhl wrote.

“Where a local ordinance forbids that which state law expressly permits, local law necessarily contradicts state law,” she wrote.

David Lawrence, an attorney representing Monrovia, said the decision probably would not hinder the gist of the law.

“From the city’s perspective, it doesn’t have an opposition to adding exceptions,” he said. “I don’t think the plaintiffs got all they wanted.”

Farris said he was elated with the judge’s decision and thought it would significantly affect rulings in other cities. But he was worried that it wasn’t broad enough.

“We hope Monrovia doesn’t come up with some cosmetic fix and we have to go through this again,” he said.