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SATURDAY, JANUARY 4, 2003
Volume 2, Issue 45
Santa Monica Daily Press A newspaper with issues
Activists sue city over ‘anti-homeless’ laws
Carolyn Sackariason/Daily Press
(Left) James Lafferty of the National Lawyers Guild speaks to the press on Friday regarding a lawsuit filed against the city. (Right) Homeless persons and activists march in protest over a new law aimed at distributors who give food to the homeless in city parks.
Homeless march down Promenade to protest barriers placed on local food lines
“Santa Monica, to its everlasting shame, has made an immoral bargain with the devil.”
BY ANDY FIXMER Daily Press Staff Writer
— JAMES LAFFERTY
Homeless advocates on Friday filed a federal lawsuit challenging a Santa Monica law which makes giving free food to the city’s poor more difficult. Chanting slogans like “Human needs, not Bayside greed,” dozens of homeless and activists marched down the Third Street Promenade on Friday to a press conference where lawyers announced they have sued the city in an attempt to stop it from enforcing what they believe is an unconstitutional ban on food lines. “Santa Monica, to its everlasting shame, has made an immoral bargain with the devil,” said James Lafferty, executive
Executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, Los Angeles Chapter
director of the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. “It has decided that it’s more important to shield its tourists and shoppers from having to gaze upon hungry residents lining up for food than it is to provide enough food to shield its hungry residents from starvation.” The City Council in October adopted a law giving its police force the ability to break up food distribution programs that lack permits from both the Los Angeles County Health Department and the city. City officials say the ordinance doesn’t
create any new barriers to food lines but does allow for laws that are already on the books to be enforced. “What it does is provide notice to the community that the state health laws are in effect and applied to distribution of food to the public, which is the county’s interpretation of the state law,” said City Attorney Marsha Moutrie. “I don’t think our law imposes any significant new restrictions and I think it just makes the state health standards more broadly applicable.” As of Friday afternoon, Moutrie said
she had not seen a copy of the lawsuit, but her office is ready to defend the city’s ordinance in court regardless. Homeless rights advocates say the law gives the city unilateral power to deny food distributors to set up in the city’s parks, violating the constitutional rights of the charities and religious organizations that run the programs. “Although under this new law you can feed someone with the city’s permission, there is no system in place for asking for permission,” said Carol Soble, a local well-known civil rights attorney who is litigating the case . “This is clearly a violation of a person’s civil rights.” County health officials have said they welcome the city’s controversial new law and say there is a need to better monitor outdoor food distribution programs. However, many volunteers of various See PROTEST, page 7
SM senator weighs in on coastal commission ruling BY STEVE LAWRENCE Associated Press Writer
SACRAMENTO — Senator Sheila Kuehl, a Santa Monica Democrat, said her party will likely respond to an appeals court ruling that could threaten the protection of state’s coastline by suggesting that members of the Coastal Commission have fixed terms.
Kuehl, who chairs the Senate Natural Resources and Wildlife Committee, said this week that Democrats probably would respond to the ruling with legislation that would set fixed terms for coastal commissioners, increasing their independence from legislative leaders. Meanwhile, the Senate’s leader urged Gov. Gray Davis on Thursday to call a special legisla-
tive session to respond quickly to Monday’s ruling by the 3rd District Court of Appeal that the Coastal Commission violates California’s constitution because legislative leaders appoint eight of its 12 members and can remove them at will. The court ruled that it violates the constitution’s separation of powers clause by allowing lawmakers to control an executive branch agency.
“The California coastline is not only an environmental treasure but an economic one as well...,” Senate President Pro Tem John Burton said in a letter to the governor. “If this decision is upheld by the Supreme Court without a legislative solution in place, the state’s ability to protect the coast would be jeopardized.” Davis aides said they were working on a response to Burton,
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D-San Francisco. “In a practical sense, this unrestrained power to replace a majority of the commission’s voting members ... allows the legislative branch not only to declare the law but also to control the commission’s execution of the law and exercise of its quasi-judicial powers,” a threeSee RULING, page 7