Day Laborers vs. Costa Mesa: Part III

Day laborers prepare to march to city hall to announce their lawsuit on Feb. 2, 2010. Photo: Arturo Tolenttino

Day laborers in Costa Mesa are suing the city to repeal its anti-solicitation ordinance because they say it is unconstitutional and violates their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. For years day laborers in the city have alleged that police have harassed them as they looked for work on public sidewalks, falsely telling them that they had no right to be there. The city’s ordinance does not ban looking for work on public sidewalks, but places tight restrictions on solicitations for work, business or charity that even the city acknowledges it would not apply to protesters. Police records and interviews by the OC Voice reveal that besides the questionable constitutionality of the ordinance, the city has enforced the ordinance unequally, applying it almost exclusively to day laborers while ignoring violations by numerous other workers who twirl signs and make other motions on city sidewalks in order to attract customers to local businesses. The OC Voice was the first to break the story of alleged police harassment under the ordinance and the possibility that a lawsuit would be filed by the ACLU on behalf of the day laborers in October, 2007. This is the second of five parts in video,  and the third  part of a three-part interview with Chief of Police Christopher Shawkey.