For Immediate Release May 5th, 2016 Contact: Armando Carmona, armando@ndlon.org, (323) 250-3018 Memorial Celebration Honors Fernando Pedraza, Day Laborer Tragically Killed During Minutemen Protest Rancho Cucamonga, CA – Today, on May 5th 2016, workers, local leaders, community members and the family of Jose Fernando Pedraza gathered to celebrate, remember his life. He is honored by those who…
This groundbreaking civil rights lawsuit begin in 2004, when the City of Redondo Beach initiated the “Day Labor Enforcement Project.” Under a local ordinance that made soliciting day labor a crime, police arrested over 50 day laborers. The Comite de Jornaleros de Redondo Beach and NDLON, represented by MALDEF, immediately brought suit, arguing that the City’s ordinance violated the First Amendment.
On September 16, 2001, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, struck down the ordinance, declaring: “We agree with the day laborers that the Ordinance is a facially unconstitutional restriction on speech.” The case is the first at the federal appellate level to decide the constitutionality of an anti-solicitation ordinance aimed at day laborers. On February 21, 2012, the Supreme Court declined to hear Redondo Beach’s appeal. The Supreme Court’s decision removed the City’s last chance to preserve its unconstitutional restriction on speech and confirmed the Ninth Circuit’s decision as controlling law throughout the western United States.
The first ever national study of corner day laborers conducted by UCLA and UIC in 2006. The report contains groundbreaking findings of the scale of the corner day labor industry in the US and the conditions such workers face.
The Day Laborer and The Palm Reader by Christian Drake