## Facts

- Los Angeles Municipal Code § 85.02 made it unlawful to use a vehicle parked on city streets or certain city-controlled lots “as living quarters either overnight, day-by-day, or otherwise.”
- In 2010, after public complaints in Venice, the City renewed enforcement of § 85.02 and the LAPD formed a Venice Homelessness Task Force to focus on vehicle-dwelling.
- An internal LAPD memorandum advised officers to warn, then cite, then arrest people observed living out of vehicles, using informal time-based triggers (more than one night sleeping in the vehicle or three or more days living out of it).
- Plaintiffs, homeless individuals who used their vehicles in Venice, were cited or arrested for ordinary conduct (e.g., eating in a car, keeping a sleeping bag and personal items, sitting in a car during rain, talking on a phone).
- Enforcement was inconsistent: similar conduct was sometimes ignored, and officer testimony differed on what conduct violated the ordinance; arrest reports often lacked observations matching the internal guidance.
- Plaintiffs sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging § 85.02 violated due process because it failed to provide fair notice and allowed arbitrary, discriminatory enforcement.
- The district court granted summary judgment to the City and rejected plaintiffs’ vagueness theory; plaintiffs appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether plaintiffs adequately raised a facial due process vagueness challenge to § 85.02 in their pleading.
2. Whether § 85.02 is facially void for vagueness because it fails to give fair notice of prohibited conduct.
3. Whether § 85.02 is facially void for vagueness because it authorizes or encourages arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement, including targeting homeless and poor individuals.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit held plaintiffs sufficiently pleaded a due process vagueness challenge, even without using the phrase “void for vagueness,” because the complaint alleged lack of notice and lack of enforcement standards.
- The court held § 85.02 was unconstitutionally vague on its face under the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause.
- The court concluded the ordinance provided inadequate notice of what conduct was prohibited and invited discriminatory enforcement.
- The court rejected the City’s reliance on internal LAPD guidance as a saving construction because it was not in the ordinance’s text, was not public, and was applied inconsistently.
- The court reversed the grant of summary judgment for the City and remanded for further proceedings.

## Legal Principles

- A law is void for vagueness if it fails to provide a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice of what is prohibited.
- A law is also void for vagueness if it is so standardless that it authorizes or encourages seriously discriminatory enforcement.
- Undefined and open-ended terms that can criminalize commonplace conduct may fail due process notice requirements, especially when the text lacks objective limits.
- Internal enforcement policies or memoranda cannot cure statutory vagueness where the ordinance itself contains no narrowing criteria and the guidance is not binding, public, or consistently applied.
- Facial invalidation is warranted where the ordinance’s language and structure, viewed with actual enforcement, permit arbitrary selection of who will be punished.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit invalidated Los Angeles’s prohibition on using a vehicle as “living quarters” because the ordinance’s undefined, open-ended language did not give fair notice and allowed standardless enforcement, resulting in arbitrary and discriminatory application against homeless and poor individuals.


Desertrain v. City of Los Angeles, 754 F.3d 1147 (9th Cir. 2014)