Surprise Settles Lawsuit With ACLU, Won't Evict Renters For Calling Police Too Often
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Renters in Surprise can no longer be evicted for calling the police too many times after city council voted to repeal laws the American Civil Liberties Union said violated the First Amendment, and punished people for being the victim of a crime.
The so-called crime free or nuisance provisions were passed in 2010, and they pressured landlords to act against tenants who called police more than four times in 30 days.
The ACLU sued Surprise last year on behalf of a woman who faced eviction after she repeatedly called authorities to report an abusive boyfriend.
The ordinances gave a guise of reducing crime because they discouraged people from calling police, according to Dan Pochoda, senior council for the ACLU of Arizona.
“It’s very important to not only see if it’s actually impacting crime,” Pochoda said. “But to see if it’s creating, as it did in this instance, harms to the crime victims themselves.”
As part of the lawsuit settlement, Surprise agreed not to try and pass similar measures in the future and to pay the plaintiff $40,000, Pochoda said.
Now that the case against Surprise is over, Pochoda said the ACLU plans to look into whether similar laws in Phoenix, Mesa and throughout the state are constitutional.
The nuisance provisions were meant to help deal with the need to cut services during the Great Recession, according to Heather Macre, an attorney who worked on the Surprise case with the ACLU.
“I don’t think they come from a place where they necessarily want to punish crime victims or they want crime to be under-reported,” said Macre, a partner in the firm Aiken Schenk. “But I think that these laws really just show how unintended consequences can harm people.”
