A state law against loitering has been ruled unconstitutional three times since it was passed in 1965, but the city continues to enforce it, often using it as an excuse to round up the homeless in bus terminals and men whom cops perceive as gay and "cruising" for sex. Yesterday a United States District Court judge held the city in contempt of court for failing to comply with orders to stop enforcing the loitering laws. In a 44-page ruling obtained by the Times, Judge Shira A. Scheindlin blasted the city:
Year after year, the court and plaintiffs pushed and prodded the city into meaningful action. The city’s obstinance and uncooperativeness throughout the present actions is offensive to the rule of law. The human toll, of course, has been borne by the tens of thousands of individuals who have, at once, had their constitutional rights violated and been swept into the penal system.
More disturbing still, it appears the laws — which target panhandling, remaining in a bus or train station, and ‘cruising’ for sex — have been enforced against the poor and gay men.
The ruling came in response to a class action lawsuit on behalf of three men who were issued loitering summonses. The contempt finding will cost the city $500 for every illegal summons, with the fine increasing $500 every three months after that, with a maximum fine of $5,000 per summons. In her stinging rebuke, Judge Scheindlin also saved some contempt for Albany, writing, "One cannot help but wonder whether the Legislature’s decades-long failure to rescind these unconstitutional laws is but another example of that body’s notorious dysfunction."
Responding to the ruling, a lawyer for the city said, "No system in a city as large as New York — where hundreds of thousands of summonses are issued each year by tens of thousands of officers — is going to function flawlessly, but the department will continue to make every effort to ensure that these statutes are not enforced." But attorney Katherine Rosenfeld, who represented the plaintiffs, breaks it down for the Times: "If 450 investment bankers had received tickets for unconstitutional laws in the last three years, I think the reaction to stop the problem would have been much swifter."
