The Department of Justice is backing a lawsuit filed by the Christian organization Micah’s Way against Santa Ana, Calif., which is attempting to prevent the group from providing food and drink to the homeless.
The DOJ decided to get involved because it views the city’s actions as a substantial burden on the plaintiff’s ministry, arguing that the actions constitute an infringement of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000. The specific question the lawsuit turns on is whether the distribution of food and drink constitutes a religious exercise under the 2000 law or is instead “incidental” to the organization’s operations, as the city has argued.
According to the DOJ’s filing, Micah’s Way (MW) feels particularly beholden to the words of Matthew 25:35, which states: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.” Since 2016, the organization has been providing food and drink to the homeless from its resource center in Santa Ana. In 2020, the organization moved its activities outdoors because of the pandemic and was joined by a needle-exchange service operated by the American Addiction Institute.
The organizations were located in a heavily residential neighborhood. According to the DOJ’s filing, the exchange was associated with increased neighborhood complaints of drug use, trespassing, littering, and loitering. In response, the mayor instructed various city departments “to devise whatever measures they could come up with to compel MW and the Needle Exchange to move out of the 4th Street neighborhood or, at the very least, to severely curtail their operations.” Micah’s Way complained in its own filing that this was “guilt by association.”
The city proceeded to issue Micah’s Way an administrative citation for unpermitted food distribution and conducting business operations without a valid certificate of occupancy (COO). However, the organization did pay yearly fees for a business license. The mayor’s intention, according to the DOJ’s filing, was “to correct what’s happening here, but also prevent it from happening anyplace else in the City.” Micah’s Way applied for a COO and was denied, being told it was engaged in food-distribution activities that were allegedly not permitted in the district. The group was threatened with the “issuance of administrative fines, criminal prosecution and/or civil remedies such as injunctions and penalties.”
After a second denial, Micah’s Way met with city’s officials and offered to return operations indoors, but the city rejected the offer. The organization then sued.
Similar to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the 2000 law holds that no government shall impose or implement a land-use regulation in a manner that imposes a substantial burden on the religious exercise of a person, including a religious assembly or institution unless the government demonstrates that the imposition of that burden is the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling governmental interest.
Micah’s Way claims that providing such a service is part of its “religious duty.” It claims that moving locations would be “impossible,” owing to the costs and the unlikelihood of finding a landlord willing to rent to an organization that serves the homeless. Also, it cannot relocate without experiencing significant uncertainty, delay, expense, and other violations of its religious purpose. The organization also believes that an application for a COO in another part of town may be denied.
The organization claimed in its filing that the city has failed to prove in administrative hearings that its activities led to any of the adverse effects on the neighborhood and that the effects were in fact ameliorated when the needle-exchange service moved out in February 2022.
In 2004, the city was sued by the Catholic organization Isaiah House for attempting to curb its sheltering of homeless people. The organization also clothed and fed them. The Los Angeles Times reported that the city eventually repealed the ordinance at issue, cutting short the legal fight.
Santa Ana has had a longstanding complaint that the city shoulders too much of the county’s homeless crisis, according to the L.A. Times. The Orange County Jail is in the middle of Santa Ana, and the city blames the county for releasing people who have no way to get back to the cities where they were picked up.
The case has been filed in the Central District of California, and the court is currently considering a motion to dismiss from the city.