MONROVIA, California—Monrovia’s daytime curfew ordinance has been called both a tool for martial law and a national model for cracking down on teenage truancy.

     According to Michael Farris, lead attorney for the plaintiffs suing Monrovia and its Chief of Police, the city’s daytime curfew “is not only antithetical to basic principles of freedom, it just doesn’t work to reduce juvenile crime, dropouts, or truancy.”

     The next episode in the case will be this Friday, May 22, in Los Angeles Superior Court, where oral arguments are set for 9 a.m.

     Monrovia’s ordinance makes it unlawful for any minor under age 18 to be in any public place between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. on days when school is in session. It is not enforced by truancy officers, but by Monrovia police.

     The plaintiffs allege that the daytime curfew ordinance violates their constitutional rights. The suit arose after home school and private school students were stopped, interrogated and temporarily detained more than 25 times.

     When President Clinton visited Monrovia during his 1996 reelection campaign, it was reported in the American Bar Association Journal, that “Clinton called the curfew...‘a sterling example’ of the administration’s own initiatives to tighten the reins on kids.”

Farris said Monrovia’s daytime curfew law poses a serious threat to civil liberties in that city as well as the rest of California. “Americans live in a free country. Monrovia is not a war zone. Daytime curfews are a tool of martial law and Monrovia’s daytime curfew ordinance seriously infringes the rights of parents and school children.”

     Farris is president of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), an advocacy organization with a national membership exceeding 58,000 families—11,000 of them in California.

     In an effort to curb truancy and juvenile crime, Monrovia’s officials have stripped all youth of fundamental freedoms to move about freely and to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. “Trading basic American freedoms for an ineffective truancy program is a bad deal,” Farris said.

     Two of the Monrovia plaintiffs, Jesse and Benedict Harrahill, ages 15 and 13, have been stopped, interrogated and temporarily detained on at least 20 occasions. Sixteen-year-old Gabriel Chavez was stopped and interrogated five times by five different officers during a 20-minute period in the fall of 1996. Melinda Isenberger is a 15-year-old who was walking to a store with a classmate when two plain-clothes officers in an unmarked car began to follow them. Fearing for their safety, they began to run. The officers pursued them and stopped the girls. Though they never identified themselves as police, the officials warned the girls that a permission slip from school was inadequate and that next time, “more identification” would be needed.

     “President Clinton couldn’t have been more wrong when he praised daytime curfews last year as ‘the most effective crime measure yet,’” Farris said.

     Michael Farris may be contacted by calling (540) 338-8663. The California attorney working with Farris is Andrew Zepeda. He may be reached at (310) 274-8700.