City is ordered to pay nearly $1M to attorneys
Panhandling ordinance was disputed by lawyers
A federal judge has ordered the city of Oklahoma City to pay nearly $1 million — $986,350 in legal fees and $2,676.56 in expenses — to the publicinterest attorneys who successfully challenged a 2015 panhandling ordinance.
In a 14-page order, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton wrote the award “fairly compensates plaintiffs’ counsel for their efforts, is substantial enough to encourage attorneys to undertake representation in public interest cases like this one, and is reasonable under the circumstances.”
The original intent of the ordinance was to force panhandlers from traffic medians at busy intersections, where they seek handouts from drivers waiting at stop lights.
The city argued medians were dangerous, casting the ordinance as a public safety necessity. The city council voted 7-2 for the measure on Dec. 8, 2015.
Social and religious activists said the measure amounted to criminalization of poverty.
The award is $300,000 less than the amount sought by the challengers, a five-member legal team led by the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma.
Heaton, who upheld the ordinance before being overturned on appeal, wrote in his order, dated Aug. 23, “this is not a situation where exceptional results were achieved with an extraordinary economy of time.”
“The court is unpersuaded that the result of the litigation was to establish some significant new principle of law,” he wrote.
A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver in 2020 found the ordinance violated First Amendment free-speech guarantees. The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year declined the city’s request to review the ruling. The ACLU of Oklahoma noted in its response that the “burden” for the $1 million-plus legal bill run up by the Oklahoma City Council in defending the ordinance would fall on city taxpayers.
“We hope this fee amount will deter Oklahoma City from violating the constitutional rights of Oklahomans and encourage them to consider the concerns of the community in the future,” ACLU staff attorney Megan Lambert said in a written statement.
Joseph Thai, the ACLU team’s lead attorney and a constitutional law professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, said by text Friday morning, “We are pleased with the sizable award — nearly $1 million.”
“All told, OKC sunk around $1.25 million into outside attorneys’ fees, plus five years of city attorneys’ time and taxpayer resources, to defend its violation of the Constitution.
“Certainly there were other needs for these public funds, such as homeless services and food insecurity,” Thai wrote.
“We disagree with the court’s assessment that we worked too hard to vindicate the rights of OKC’s poor and least powerful citizens,” he wrote. “But we hope this sizable award will deter the city next time — and if not, encourage other civil rights attorneys to hold the city accountable”
Attorneys for the city had encouraged Heaton to award no more than $732,640, a notion fought by Thai’s team, who contended the figure added up to bad math.