Judge Blocks Crackdown on Redondo Beach’s Day Laborers

A federal judge issued an injunction Monday against Redondo Beach, preventing authorities from using traffic enforcement laws to arrest day laborers who solicit work on public sidewalks.

Redondo Beach is the latest city to crack down on day laborers, but this seaside town has been particularly aggressive. Police have cited or arrested 63 day laborers and seven potential customers since the beginning of October, the city attorney’s office said.

Officials argue that laborers are a public nuisance because they halt pedestrian and auto traffic, cause littering problems and hassle passersby at the two street corners where they congregate.

Several day laborers, who are represented by lawyers from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, filed suit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles after undercover police officers solicited and then arrested the workers.

Judge Consuelo B. Marshall said Monday that her injunction would stay in effect until the case goes through the courts. The decision came after Marshall had expressed misgivings about Redondo Beach’s actions last week, suggesting that the city unfairly singles out day laborers.

The judge said “there are serious questions” as to whether Redondo Beach’s restrictions are “constitutional on its face and as applied to day laborers under the 1st Amendment.”

Shaheena Simons, an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said she knows of no other California city that has acted as forcefully against day laborers as Redondo Beach, although many cities have ordinances that restrict sidewalk job solicitation.

Redondo Beach’s ordinance prohibits people from standing on “roadways, parkways, medians, alleys, sidewalks, curbs and public ways” to solicit work, hawk goods or seek donations from drivers. The ordinance also makes it illegal for drivers to stop to hire workers. Violators face fines, and those without valid identification must stay in jail until they go to court.

Attorneys and advocates for the day laborers praised the judge’s action, saying that they hoped that it would reverberate beyond Redondo Beach.

“We think that today’s case will send a clear message to other municipalities around California that arresting day laborers is not the best way to respond to concerns that communities have about day laborers’ practices,” said Chris Newman, an organizer with the National Day Laborers Organizing Network.

Redondo Beach City Atty. Jerry Goddard said he was considering an appeal of the judge’s ruling to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

He denied that the day laborers are being singled out and said that neither their ethnicity nor immigration status had played any role in the prosecutions.

The city adopted the law after complaints from residents and business owners that some laborers were blocking traffic and hassling passersby.

Goddard said the city based its law partly on a 1986 ruling by the 9th Circuit, ACORN vs. City of Phoenix. In that case, a three-member panel found that Phoenix could prohibit homeless people from selling newspapers to drivers for safety reasons.

But Marshall said the facts of that case “were very different from the facts here.”

And a Phoenix official said Monday that his city does not consider the ACORN ruling to be a restriction on day laborers.

“Phoenix has no day-laborer ordinance,” said David Ramirez, the city spokesman, adding that that case focused exclusively on newspaper vending.

Goddard said he was concerned that Marshall’s ruling could dissuade other Southern California cities from enforcing day-laborer ordinances.

“If they try to enforce their ordinances, MALDEF will do the same thing,” he said. “It’s the threat that you’d better not enforce your regulations or we’ll take you to court and get a restraining order until you go to trial. All the other cities’ ordinances are going to be unenforceable.”

The legal organization filed a lawsuit against Glendale last summer, after that city had revised its day-laborer ordinance to make it illegal for workers to step into the street to solicit customers, said Ann Maurer of the Glendale city attorney’s office. The case is pending before U.S. District Judge S. James Otero.

But Maurer does not believe that the Redondo Beach court action applies to what is happening in her city.

“Redondo Beach’s ordinance prohibits any solicitation by day laborers on public sidewalks of drivers on public streets. By contrast, Glendale’s ordinance allows solicitation, as long as day laborers do not step into the street, and as long as customers do not stop traffic or park illegally.

“Obviously, from the standpoint of business owners and residents -- they don’t like it when there are large quantities of day laborers congregating around their premises,” she said. “But from our standpoint, with respect to any possible constitutional issues, we thought it was best to allow them to be on the sidewalk.”

Glendale also has a day-laborer center as an alternative to street corners. Redondo Beach has no such center, Goddard said.

After Monday’s hearing, Angel Sanchez, 50, who was one of the day laborers arrested in Redondo Beach’s stings, said that soliciting work was the only way for him to find employment. He came to the United States from Ecuador five years ago and overstayed his visa.

“It’s not fair that I was arrested,” he said. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I have to support my two children and my mother.”

Another day laborer, Arturro Hernandez, 32, came to the United States a year ago but has avoided the police so far. He makes about $400 a week, he said, enough to send money home to his family.

“It’s really important for us to be able to be day laborers because a lot of people depend on us,” he said.