The ACLU of Hawaii scored two big wins this week, both announced yesterday.

In the case with the most direct immediate impact, it obtained a court order signed by Federal Judge Helen Gillmor enforcing an agreement preventing the city from continuing to immediately destroy the personal property taken during “sweeps” of Honolulu homeless camps.

Credit goes to ACLU attorneys Dan Gluck and Mandy Finlay, along with the Alston Hunt Floyd & Ing law firm, who jointly handled the case.

The city was ordered not to immediately destroy any property it seizes.

The court order requires the city to give 24-hour notice that property will be seized, provide an opportunity for the owner to remove the property, then make video recordings of any removal, and store the seized items so that they can be retrieved later.

The property to which this stipulation applies includes, but is not limited to, tents, tarps, children’s toys, suitcases, laundry baskets, shelves/crates, backpacks, baby strollers/cribs, air compressors, recreational items like surfboards, bicycles, clothing, bedding, coolers, household goods, and furniture. Any property that is impounded must be stored for no less than 30 days….

In some cases, the court order is quite specific. For example:

The City may immediately dispose of property if the property contains flammable or otherwise hazardous chemicals, or similarly dangerous items that, if stored, could cause fire, explosion, identifiable disease, or pose a threat to life, health, or property. The City may also dispose of property that is wet, soiled, dirty, sharp or odorous only if such items are hazardous or are contaminated by mold or infested with insects, roaches, bedbugs, etc. If the owner of hazardous wet, soiled, dirty, sharp, or odorous items is present at the time of enforcement, he/she may immediately remove said items, otherwise, such items may be immediately disposed of after video taping and video recording the specific hazards as described below. Subject to the foregoing, wet tents must be stored unless they are hazardous due to a condition other than simply being wet. Nothing herein shall be construed as an admission of liability by the City for any damage that may be caused by the storage of wet items.

And conditions were imposed even in the case of allegedly hazardous materials.

…if the City immediately disposes of any Property on the basis that the Property would be hazardous to store, the City will video record a detailed description of all the hazards posed by each item disposed, as well as a detailed reasoning why the hazard cannot be removed or why reasonable accommodation could not be made to store the item….

And in a separate case, a settlement was reached with Maui County in a lawsuit over the First Amendment right to pass out leaflets and express one’s views while on public property. The lawsuit was filed after Maui police officers on special duty for the Maui Fair ordered a couple to stop handing out religious leaflets on a public sidewalk outside the fair.

According to the ACLU news release:

The lawsuit arose when, in October 2013, Pastor Strat Goodhue and his wife, Doreen, were peacefully and lawfully handing out religious literature on the public sidewalk outside the Fair, a private event that had hired MPD officers to assist with security. At the direction of Fair organizers, an MPD officer ordered the Goodhues to leave not just the Fair area, but other nearby public sidewalks as well. The ACLU and the law firm of Davis Levin Livingston filed a federal court lawsuit shortly thereafter.

Even if an organization has a permit to use a park, street, or sidewalk, if that area remains open to the general public, the First Amendment still applies. For example, individuals who want to exercise their First Amendment rights at Maui “First Friday” events and the like, where anyone can come and go as they please, are free to do so. More information is available in the ACLU of Hawaii’s First Amendment Toolkit, available at http://www.acluhi.org.

The Maui case was handled by the David Levin law firm, along with Gluck and Lois Perrin for the ACLU.

These are major decisions in cases which have taken a huge amount of legal work and will have significant public impact. Thanks to the ACLU and the cooperating law firms!