The City of Ocala has been hit with a federal lawsuit, accusing it of violating the civil rights of six people through strict policies on panhandling and “unlawful lodging.” This is the second time in two years that the city is being sued for local laws affecting houseless people.
After having its draconian, anti-homeless city ordinances declared unconstitutional by a U.S. District Court Judge in February, the city of Ocala is now facing a new federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida and the Southern Legal Counsel of Gainesville on behalf of six plaintiffs, all of whom are currently or formerly houseless.
According to the ACLU, the six plaintiffs—Roger Luebke, Kimberly Burnham, William Anthony Taylor, Victor Hoyt Cox, Dustin Damico, and Patrick McArdle—are suing to challenge what the civil rights organization describes as “unconstitutional” city ordinances that are “unlawfully vague” and criminalize asking for help while homeless.
“Every individual in this case has been subject to arrest based on the content of their speech,” says lead counsel of the SLC Chelsea Dunn. “They have been jailed and assessed fines for acts as harmless as asking a stranger for a cigarette.”
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, directly targets the city’s “trespass and unlawful lodging” and anti-panhandling ordinances, which—while not unique to Ocala—are similar to anti-homeless policies that have been struck down elsewhere across the country.
These ordinances—previously reported by Orlando Weekly as draconian and notable enough to be included in the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty’s (NLCHP) ‘Hall of Shame’—prohibit trespassing or lodging on private and public property, including parks, government buildings, church buildings, or under bridges.
The new suit filed by the ACLU and SLC alleges that Ocala’s ordinances have infringed on plaintiffs’ rights to free speech—specifically, asking for help in areas where and when, in other situations, it would be perfectly legal—and the right to due process.
“We value free speech in this country and in Florida. Just as individuals have the right to discuss politics, religion, the weather, or education in public spaces, individuals have the right to ask for help in public spaces,” Jacqueline Azis, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Florida, said in a news release.
According to the NLCHP, these types of policies disproportionately hurt marginalized populations and perpetuate a cycle of homelessness and poverty.
An annual report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), says about 558,000 people in the United States were houseless in a given night last year.
In the same report, Florida was named as one of four states where more than half of the nation’s unhoused people resided—with 27,487 houseless residents—along with California, New York, and Texas. Even so, the Sunshine State also has a rate of homelessness that is less than the national average. From 2019-2020, the number of people experiencing homelessness in Florida also reportedly decreased 3%.
This is not the first lawsuit filed by the ACLU and the SLC against the city regarding their anti-homeless ordinances. In 2019, both entities filed suit against the city on behalf of 200 unhoused plaintiffs—including McArdle, also a plaintiff in the new suit—for the unconstitutionality of the same ordinances, which are enforced by Ocala police officers as part of the city’s ‘Operation Street Sweeper’ program.
The Operation Street Sweeper program, first created in 2018, is a city-sponsored police patrol that, from December of 2018 to December of 2019, made over 200 “quality of life” arrests. While characterized by media and the city alike as a program to improve the atmosphere of downtown Ocala, the program involves aggressively patrolling and enforcing the city’s policies against resting in public spaces and panhandling.
According to the 2019 lawsuit, three named plaintiffs had collectively spent 210 days in jail and been assessed over $9,000 in fees, fines, and costs due to the enforcement of the city’s unlawful lodging and trespass ordinance.
This February, U.S. District Court Judge James Moody ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in that lawsuit, stating that the city could not cite or arrest unhoused residents for sleeping outside without first checking for available beds at local emergency shelters. The Ocala City Council responded by adopting an amendment to the ordinance, to comply with the federal ruling.
Even with this amendment, however, civil rights lawyers continue to fight Ocala’s ordinances and seek to have them declared unconstitutional. The six plaintiffs named in the new suit against Ocala have spent more than 200 days in jail, collectively, per the suit and have been assessed more than $7,750 due to the enforcement of the anti-homeless ordinances.
The suit calls on the federal court to declare the city’s anti-panhandling ordinances unconstitutional, enter a permanent injunction that would prevent the city from enforcing them, and award monetary and nominal damages to the plaintiffs for loss of protected First Amendment rights, loss of liberty, humiliation, emotional distress, and other damages.
Creative Loafing Tampa Bay reached out to the Ocala Police Department for comment on the lawsuit, as enforcers of the city ordinances that target unhoused communities. They did not provide a response in time for publication.
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This article appears in Apr 29 – May 5, 2021.
