A federal appeals court will reconsider a recent ruling that permitted Redondo Beach to resume arrests of day laborers for standing on streets and soliciting work from people inside their cars.  The order from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes only a few months after a divided three-judge panel found that the city could enforce its now 23-year-old solicitation ordinance. The rule had been challenged several years ago by a group representing day laborers.

In an order issued Friday, the court decided an 11-judge Ninth Circuit panel would rehear the case.  The decision was "welcome and not unexpected," according to the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which sued the city along with an advocacy group for day laborers.

"The two judges who voted (in June) to uphold the ordinance deviated from a long pattern of federal courts appropriately striking down such anti-solicitation ordinances as violating long-standing constitutional principle," MALDEF President and General Counsel Thomas Saenz said.  Redondo Beach City Attorney Mike Webb said the city passed its ordinance in 1987 based on a Phoenix law that had been upheld by the Ninth Circuit a year earlier.  (click on link to read full story)