Oyster Bay prepares to defend laborer law

Public safety -- and not politics -- drove Oyster Bay's crackdown on day laborers, the town argues.

Nine months after a federal judge halted enforcement of the local solicitation law, saying its broadness raised constitutional concerns, town lawyers will present their case to the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. In oral arguments Friday in Manhattan, they will reject arguments that seeking employment from a moving vehicle is protected political speech.

"The ordinance was not enacted as a rhetorical sally in the 'national debate on immigration policy,' " Jonathan Sinnreich, an attorney for Oyster Bay, wrote in a brief. "It was enacted . . . to deal with a serious problem of public safety."

Town leaders say existing traffic law insufficiently regulates the street-corner crowds, largely Latino, that gather in Locust Valley. The 2009 ordinance bans standing in town right-of-ways to "stop or attempt to stop" vehicles "for the purpose of soliciting employment."

The New York Civil Liberties Union contends it also ensnares First Amendment-protected expression. Its lawyers sued on behalf of Locust Valley's Centro de la Comunidad Hispana and The Workplace Project of Hempstead.

They laud U.S. District Judge Denis R. Hurley's preliminary injunction last May, and ask the appeals court to uphold it.

"If you want to regulate traffic, regulate traffic. Pass a law that you can't walk into the street to approach a moving vehicle," Civil Liberties Union attorney Corey Stoughton said in an interview. "But you can't pass a law saying you're not allowed to speak about employment. You just can't."

She argues that day laborers looking for work -- fighting a hostile system -- is political expression akin to the unemployed taking to the streets in the mid-1800s.

"Oyster Bay's ordinance, like similar ordinances that have been enacted across the country," Stoughton wrote in her brief, "is rooted in the anti-Latino sentiment that is a thinly disguised feature of the anti-immigration movement."

Town attorneys fiercely object to the accusation, saying day laborers' expression is clearly commercial, and traditionally less protected. Further, they argue, it seeks a transaction in violation of tax, labor and immigration laws -- which strips its right to Constitutional protection.

"They're not out there expressing political ideas," Sinnreich said in an interview. "It's a completely made-up argument to hide the fact that what's really going on here is a labor exchange."

Friday's oral arguments will take place in front of a three-judge panel at the appeals court.