Chemerinsky Invites Editorial Writer to Constitutional Debate

Don’t rile the dean of the new law school at the University of California-Irvine; he may challenge you to a debate.

Erwin Chemerinsky extended his latest debate invitation in a letter to the Wall Street Journal responding to a critical editorial, the Wall Street Journal Law Blog reports. The editorial writer, Heather Mac Donald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, had taken the dean to task for participating as a co-counsel in a lawsuit against the California city of Laguna Beach for its treatment of the homeless.

The suit contends the city is violating constitutional law and the Americans with Disabilities Act by treating disabled homeless individuals as if they were criminals.

Mac Donald warned in the editorial that the suit should serve as a warning to Orange County that the public interest law school will become “a litigation monster that will endanger the county's fabled quality of life.”

“Shrill, occasionally ungrammatical, and devoid of factual support for its sweeping accusations, the complaint could only have been written by someone who hasn’t observed this city’s police-homeless interactions, or who is blinded by ideology,” McDonald wrote. She said the police have used restraint in arresting homeless persons for violating a camping ordinance.

Chemerinsky responds that the suit seeks to enjoin an unconstitutional city ordinance that makes it a crime for the homeless to sleep in public. Mac Donald “inexplicably directs her attack at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, which has nothing to do with this lawsuit,” he writes. “The lead counsel in the case is the law firm of Irell & Manella, and I, as an individual, am one of several co-counsels. The law school has no ideology. …

“I am glad to debate Heather Mac Donald any time, any place on the constitutionality of ordinances that make being homeless a crime.”

Chemerinsky made a similar debate offer to a federal appeals judge who gave a speech (PDF) criticizing pro bono work that is done to promote social and political agendas.