Citizens Against Gated Enclaves v. Whitley Heights Civic Association

(Still being edited)

The California Court of Appeal barred the City of Los Angeles from allowing private homeowner associations to gate off streets in their neighborhoods from public use. In vacating the City’s approvals, the Court decried the effort to “return to feudal times each suburb being a fiefdom to which other citizens of the state are denied their fundamental right of access to use public streets in those areas.”

In the early 1990’s, many citizens felt threatened by crime, and they began to view living within a gated community as a panacea that would promote their security as well as raise their property values.  When Los Angeles City’s Department of Public Works announced that it would consider allowing gates to be placed across the public streets, over 100 homeowner groups soon applied for authority to do so in their communities in order to “gate out crime.”

The CAGE litigation challenged the first such gates authorized by DPW, to be placed at strategic locations surrounding the Whitley Heights community in Hollywood.  (The gates were principally located at the dividing point between apartments and single family homes.) As might have been predicted, nearby apartment dwellers were outraged by being excluded from the adjacent public access streets and by the inconvenience of the resulting narrow cul de sacs in front of their residences.  Many people living behind the gates also dissented, because they did not wish to support a perceived philosophy of “us versus them” and a “fortress mentality.”

The Court of Appeal agreed, ruling that placing gates on public streets violates fundamental state constitutional and statutory rights of free access to the public’s rights of way.  The 1994 appellate opinion observed that the courts would not lightly approve a return to such a “feudal” way of life, unless they were explicitly directed to do so by the legislature.