Legal News

Chemerinsky Takes Hit Over Laguna Beach Lawsuit. . . Then Fires Back

By Ashby Jones

We read with great interest the WSJ opinion piece on Saturday that took Erwin Chemerinksy, the rock-star dean of the new law school at UC Irvine, to task for UCI’s involvement in a lawsuit that alleges that authorities in the nearby city of Laguna Beach, Calif. (pictured), had mistreated its homeless population. (From where we sit, the story has it all: a polarizing and charismatic figure, a new law school, and issues of constitutional import, all taking place in our native land, the OC.)

In a nutshell, Saturday’s piece, written by Heather MacDonald, ripped Chemerinsky and UCI for their role in the suit, which was filed by lawyers at Irell & Manella. MacDonald wrote that if such a lawsuit exemplifies the type of litigation to be spawned by the school, whose core mission involves training students in public-interest law, then the Orange County business community should be afraid. Wrote MacDonald:

Two days before Christmas last year, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the law firm of Irell & Manella filed a complaint in federal court charging Laguna Beach police and city officials with a deliberate campaign of abuse against the homeless. Shrill, occasionally ungrammatical, and devoid of factual support for its sweeping accusations, the complaint could only have been written by someone who hasn’t observed this city’s police-homeless interactions, or who is blinded by ideology.

During her visit to Laguna Beach, MacDonald came away with the sense that the city’s homeless population is mostly okay with the behavior of local cops, and that the facilities for the homeless in Laguna are fairly robust. That said, she wrote, there are still issues, and the authorities have the right to address them through anti-camping ordinances and the like — without interference from the likes of Chemerinsky.

Chemerinsky reportedly didn’t respond to a request for an interview by MacDonald. But he responded today, in a letter to the Journal.

Contrary to Ms. MacDonald’s assertion, the city often has aggressively used criminal laws against the homeless, such as at one point an officer directing a homeless person to extinguish her cigarette and then arresting her for littering. Cities, of course, can punish drug use or assaults by the homeless or anyone else, but they cannot constitutionally punish a person for being homeless.

She also inexplicably directs her attack at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, which has nothing to do with this lawsuit. The lead counsel in the case is the law firm of Irell & Manella, and I, as an individual, am one of several co-counsels. The law school has no ideology and prides itself on developing a faculty with many different viewpoints. Ms. Mac Donald is wrong to equate a commitment to public service with liberalism; my hope is that all law students and lawyers, whatever their politics, will use their legal training to serve the public.

I am glad to debate Heather MacDonald any time, any place on the constitutionality of ordinances that make being homeless a crime.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 19, 2009 (boomark / email).