Cities to battered women: SHUT UP or GET OUT - Column
Enforcement of nuisance laws disproportionately hurts domestic violence victims.
In cities across the country, victims of crime increasingly pay a terrible but little-known price for calling 911: eviction from their homes. Domestic violence victims are prime targets.
Take Nancy Markham of Surprise, Ariz. In March 2014, her ex-boyfriend choked and punched her in the mouth, prompting her to call for help. By the time police arrived, he had left. Police did not arrest him for five months, and during that period, she dialed 911 when he repeatedly threatened her at her home.
Eventually, he was incarcerated for domestic violence, but by then, Markham learned that she faced eviction under Surprise’s nuisance ordinance for accessing police services. The Surprise law bars landlords from renting to tenants who call the police four times within 30 days, or when two or more crimes occur at the property at any time. It makes no exceptions for tenants who need emergency assistance. A Surprise police officer warned Markham’s landlord and property manager that unless they took action against her, they risked civil and criminal consequences under the ordinance.
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Nationwide, localities are enacting similar laws that punish tenants and landlords based on calls for police service or criminal activity at a property — even where the tenant is the victim. Advocates have identified hundreds of these laws, commonly known as nuisance, crime-free or disorderly behavior ordinances, and there are likely thousands more on the books.
While these ordinances might appear benign to local officials, they are unconstitutional on their face and devastating in their impact. They violate the First Amendment right to petition the government, which includes the freedom to contact law enforcement. By suppressing that right, the ordinances force crime victims to make the impossible choice between suffering in silence or calling 911 and losing their homes. Muzzling victims not only jeopardizes them and their families, it also undermines public safety by discouraging reports to law enforcement.
Enforcement of nuisance laws disproportionately hurts domestic violence victims, because crime is often perpetrated against them at their homes. This summer, with the Social Science Research Council, the ACLU released a report establishing that domestic violence survivors were the main scapegoats in the enforcement of these laws in two upstate New York cities. This analysis confirms the harms to survivors we have observed in our work in other states, including Arizona, Illinois, Iowa and Pennsylvania.
Women of color are particularly vulnerable to this statutory victim-blaming. A new study of St. Louis’s nuisance law revealed that it stopped domestic violence victims, most of whom were low-income African-American women, from calling 911. In 2012, Harvard and Columbia researchers likewise determined that a Milwaukee ordinance was disproportionately enforced against African-American neighborhoods, with domestic violence as a top trigger. Researchers wrote: “Police often treat domestic violence — and especially domestic violence that occurs in black neighborhoods — as a nuisance rather than a crime.”
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For our client Lakisha Briggs, the ordinance of Norristown, Pa., operated as an additional weapon wielded by her abusive ex-partner. He continuously harassed her, knowing she could not call police to eject him without getting evicted. Her worst fears came true when he stabbed her. A neighbor summoned life-saving emergency aid, and the city ordered her landlord to remove her and her child from their home.
These ordinances are growing in popularity, usually in a misguided effort to reduce city budgets. Fortunately, some policymakers are responding to their profoundly inhumane effects. Pennsylvania and Illinois recently joined Minnesota in passing legislation that protects many crime victims who seek emergency assistance from punishment under local ordinances. In the past two years, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has investigated cities in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, recognizing how these ordinances can violate the Fair Housing Act.
While the federal government should expand its civil rights oversight, and other states should rein in municipal restrictions on police services, the simplest solution is for cities to reject these laws. Instead of foisting the burden of addressing crime onto landlords and victims, cities should focus on what works: building strong relationships between community members and police, providing training and resources for officers in effective and bias-free policing, and perhaps most important, supporting survivors who courageously come forward.
Sandra S. Park is a senior attorney at the ACLU Women’s Rights Project.
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