Day Laborers Sue

[ilbegone]

"Our core constitutional principles of equality and freedom demand that a day laborer enjoy the same right to free expression as a political activist or a member of a charitable group," Belinda Escobosa Helzer, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, told reporters at a press conference Tuesday.

Where are these day laborer's individual places of business? Where are the individual places of business for the employers who hire them? Where are all the W4 forms and I-9s the employers are legally required to maintain for every employee hired?

This is not a group of people expressing political belief on the corner, for which it may be necessary to get a permit, but people engaged in commercial activity. Local governments have the right to regulate commercial activity, such as by zoning. And apparently, the streets in Costa Mesa are not zoned for day labor solicitation of employment nor for employers to seek labor.

Nor do the streets seem to be zoned for nor the proper permits obtained for loitering, noise making, or being in the country illegally.

Not a one of those day laborers or their employers have a mailbox on that figurative corner, nor is that figurative corner a legal place of business.