Members of a religious group threatened with ticketing and arrest for serving meals to the homeless at Doheny State Park can resume their ministry under a settlement with state parks officials announced today. The agreement stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Southern California, alleging the state had infringed on the group's freedom of expression and religion.
'It is a good day when we can express our faith by helping our fellow human beings,' said James Seiler, the former president of Welcome INN (Interfaith Needs Network), the plaintiffs in the case. 'It's comforting to see that state government officials have come to understand the importance of religious liberty, no matter how it is expressed.'
In February, state park rangers threatened to cite and arrest members of Welcome INN for violating Section 4321 of the California State Administrative Code when the religious group hosted meals for about 40 homeless people in the picnic area of Doheny.
Patti Church, the current president of Welcome INN, sought help from the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU/SC), explaining that counseling and sharing food with homeless men, women, and children on a person-to-person basis is key to the group's ministry.
'It's important for each member to hand each homeless individual a meal and to pray and give thanks with that person,' Church said. 'That is what Welcome INN's charter says and that is what we're about.'
On May 8, the ACLU/SC filed suit against the California Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR), claiming Section 4321 - which spells out rules governing unlawful assembly -- is unconstitutionally broad and should be struck down because it interferes with the group's First
Amendment rights to freedom of expression and religion.
Under the settlement announced today, the DPR agrees not to enforce the regulation against anyone for three years. If they choose, officials can then work on a new, more specific regulation that will allow them to successfully manage gatherings at state parks, without impinging on constitutional rights, said Hector Villagra, director of the Orange County office of the ACLU/SC, who litigated the case.
'Park rangers ought to be able to reasonably manage gatherings at state parks,' Villagra said. 'But this rule was so broad that it threatened to significantly interfere with protected speech. Now, officials will have a chance to draft a new rule that respects the First Amendment while regulating park use in a measured way.'

ORANGE, Calif. - A state appeals court has affirmed the dismissal of misdemeanor charges of disrupting a meeting against Coyotl Tezcatlipoca, a former Orange Coast College student involved in a free-speech lawsuit against the city of Costa Mesa.

The court agreed with Belinda Escobosa-Helzer, an attorney for the Orange County office of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, who argued that a local attorney appointed by the city to prosecute the case against Tezcatlipoca did not have authority because he had not been duly sworn in or appointed under California law.

'The law is pretty black and white on this,' Escobosa-Helzer said. 'I think the court's opinion recognizes that. We're holding the city and its representatives to the requirements of the law.'

At a meeting of the Costa Mesa City Council in January of 2006, Tezcatlipoca, also known as Benito Acosta, was speaking out against a proposal to deputize local police officers to enforce immigration law when then-Mayor Allan Mansoor cut him off. Several officers then surrounded Tezcatlipoca, dragged him out of chambers and arrested him.

Representing Tezcatlipoca, the ACLU/SC filed a federal lawsuit against the city in March, charging that his First Amendment, due process and equal protection rights had been violated. Three months later, Danny Peelman, a local attorney who worked with the firm that represented the city in the civil case, filed misdemeanor charges against Tezcatlipoca, even though the Orange County District Attorney's Office had declined to prosecute.

In October 2007, Orange County Superior Court Judge Kelly McEachern dismissed the case against Tezcatlipoca, finding that Peelman had not been duly sworn in or appointed. The city appealed. But on Wednesday, acting presiding Judge Greg L. Prickett of the state court of appeals, along with judges Mary Fingal Schulte and Robert J. Moss, issued an order affirming the lower court ruling.

'Private criminal prosecutions are illegal in California,' Escobosa-Helzer said. 'The court's opinion confirms the allegations that we made from the beginning that this prosecution was vindictive and in retaliation for Mr. Tezcatlipoca's assertion of his constitutional rights.'

The three California affiliates of the ACLU have filed a joint request for detailed information on the focus and methods of two little-known government centers in the state that gather broad data about American citizens in the name of fighting terrorism.

The three ACLU affiliates - in Northern California, Southern California, and San Diego and Imperial counties - are seeking information under the California Public Records Act about the Joint Regional Intelligence Center in Norwalk and the State Terrorism Threat Assessment Center in Sacramento.

'We don't know a lot about these centers. There's a lot of secrecy as to the methods they're using and what kind of information they're gathering,' said Tori Praul, a privacy researcher with the ACLU of Southern California who is coordinating the records requests.

This much about the two California data centers is clear, however: they are part of a de facto new domestic intelligence apparatus that poses potentially serious threats to privacy. Established by the Bush administration's National Strategy for Information Sharing, the California centers are among a growing network of some 40 such centers nationwide that collect criminal records, public- and private-sector data and, in Los Angeles, vaguely defined information from 'suspicious activity reports' generated by LAPD officers.

'The personal information of innocent Americans is being collected and used by these government fusion centers without proper safeguards. This opens the door to abusive police practices of the past, such as the FBI's targeting notable civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr.,' said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. 'All too often we've given our government new powers to protect national security, only to have them used against innocent Americans. We need to learn from our mistakes, not repeat them.'

The ACLU recently updated its November 2007 report, 'What's the Matter with Fusion Centers,' in which the group warned about the potential dangers of these new institutions, including ambiguous lines of authority, excessive secrecy, troubling private-sector and military roles, and collection of information about peaceful activities. The update explains how recent developments have only confirmed the urgency of these warnings.

'We warned that the structure of fusion centers was ripe for abuse, and that recruiting every corner beat cop to file reports on innocent, everyday behavior was a bad idea,' said ACLU National Security Policy Counsel and report co-author Michael German. 'Already, we have seen criminal abuses in California, and many reports of law enforcement personnel wasting their time harassing perfectly innocent individuals.'

Praul said the records requests by the ACLU's California affiliates are aimed at finding out 'everything we possibly can about how these centers function'who participates, what kinds of records are housed there, who has access to those records, what types of surveillance methods they employ, under what legal authority their activities are carried out, and what kind of oversight systems are in place to ensure that the centers comply with the law.

'Ultimately, we hope that by obtaining more information, we can assess the legality of their intelligence gathering. We are concerned that they may be targeting innocent individuals and groups based on characteristics such as ethnicity, religion or political activity. We are also concerned that they may be gathering information without the proper legal basis for doing so,' she said.