A lawsuit against an Orange County city that has opted to “exempt” itself from California’s controversial sanctuary law will move forward, a judge ruled Friday.
Orange County Superior Court Judge William Claster denied a motion to dismiss the case against Los Alamitos but agreed with the city to remove both the city manager and the police department as defendants.
Los Al, as it’s known to its residents, created an ordinance last April to opt-out from a new law called the California Values Act, which limits cooperation between local and state agencies with federal immigration agents. Two days later, the newly formed group Los Alamitos Community United, Rev. Samuel Pullen and local resident Henry Josefsberg sued the city.
The ordinance, they argued in the lawsuit, will cause “imminent and irreversible harm” to immigrant communities in Los Alamitos and surrounding cities.
The judge’s order denying the city’s request for dismissal “is the second legal blow for Los Alamitos’ anti-sanctuary ordinance,” said Jessica Karp Bansal, litigation director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which along with the ACLU and another law firm is representing the plaintiffs.
The first blow, she said, came in July when a federal judge sided with California and against the Trump administration in rejecting the federal government’s move to block the California Values Act.
Los Alamitos Mayor Troy Edgar didn’t see Friday’s ruling as a setback but as a procedural action that offered both sides direction and removed City Manager Bret Plumlee and the city’s police department from the lawsuit.
“This is a critical fight for local control,” said Edgar, who earlier this week was at the White House for a recognition of the nation’s immigration agency. This was his second invitation to the White House since his city of some 12,000 residents attracted national attention thanks to the anti-sanctuary law.
A handful of jurisdictions passed resolutions last year before the California Values Act became law and took effect on Jan. 1. But it was Los Alamitos’ move this spring to create an ordinance that spurred a backlash against the law across the state.
There are 14 counties and 48 cities that have taken action against the sanctuary law, mostly in the form of resolutions, according to Shawn Steel, Republican national committeeman of California. They include nearly half of Orange County, with 16 cities approving measures against the sanctuary law and the county itself taking an oppositional stance. In the Inland Empire, numerous cities also have voted to oppose the law, including Beaumont, Corona, Murrieta and Yucaipa.
Meanwhile, one of the anti-sanctuary cities, Huntington Beach, filed its own lawsuit against California. A hearing is set for Sept. 27.