Youth curfews on trial in Florida high court

A Pinellas Park case could well be a test for youth curfews around the state.

By DIANE RADO

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 7, 2001

TALLAHASSEE -- In the fall of 1997, 17-year-old Tiffani Macfarlane made the mistake of standing outside in a Pinellas Park neighborhood at 1 a.m.

She was handcuffed and placed in a police squad car, accused of being out too late and violating Pinellas Park's juvenile curfew ordinance.

Today, Tiffani, known as "T.M., a Juvenile," in court records, has become the center of a case that has wound its way to the highest court in Florida and could potentially wipe out juvenile curfew laws around the state.

In a lively exchange with attorneys Tuesday, the Florida Supreme Court weighed whether a curfew designed to keep kids safe and out of trouble actually violates the state Constitution. Does a juvenile curfew infringe on privacy rights afforded even to children in Florida? Does it interfere in parents' ability to raise their children without government interference?

"This is just one of many tools that are being used to keep the streets safe for everybody," argued Michael J. Neimand, a senior assistant attorney general defending the Pinellas Park curfew before the justices. "To keep children off the street at night is not that great of an imposition on society. I don't think it's a great imposition upon the parents themselves."

Justice Leander J. Shaw Jr. shot back: "It is where you have a state that has determined that the right of privacy is so important that it has put that right in its Constitution."

Bruce Howie, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has challenged the curfew as unconstitutional, told justices that sometimes there are legitimate reasons for teenagers to be out at night.

We live in a "24-7 society," Howie said. "A society that allows us to do our shopping, our banking and other transactions 24 hours a day. Single parents often rely on their teenagers to perform certain tasks and errands. This ordinance disenfranchises those parents, and by imposing this restriction on people under the age of 18, disrupts the parent-child relationship."

Pinellas Park's curfew generally restricts youths younger than 18 from being in public without an adult from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. on weekdays and from midnight to 6 a.m. on weekends and legal holidays. A written warning is the penalty for the first violation. Juveniles can be fined up to $500 and face six months' imprisonment for subsequent violations.

Tampa, Largo, Miami-Dade County, and Orlando are among the jurisdictions that have juvenile curfews, though Orlando's is not citywide -- it covers only certain blocks downtown. St. Petersburg declined to pass a curfew ordinance last fall.

Neimand said the Supreme Court will consider whether juvenile curfews are constitutional, and if so, whether Pinellas Park's curfew meets the standards to keep it in line with the Constitution. If the court rules curfews are not constitutional, "all juvenile curfews in the state go."

That would be of concern to law enforcement officers who are fans of curfews.

"I worked gangs, and when you see 11- and 12-year-olds out at 3 or 4 in the morning, it makes you wonder. Most of the time, the parents don't even know when they're out," said Nelda Fonticiella, a spokeswoman for Miami-Dade police.

But some justices clearly seemed troubled by the scope of Pinellas Park's curfew. Justice Barbara Pariente pointed out that while Pinellas Park's ordinance has criminal penalties, the state law upon which local curfew ordinances are based "makes this a civil infraction, which to me is a pretty big distinction -- this idea that you can fight juvenile crime by making juveniles criminals."

Howie said the ordinance goes too far in other ways. For example, it doesn't create an exception for a parent giving consent for a child be out after curfew.

Justice Harry Lee Anstead essentially questioned why the ordinance was needed in the first place. "We're not talking about a case where statistics were offered into evidence that in this particular community there is a very serious problem of juveniles being victims of crimes," Anstead said. "None of that is in the record."

Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Peter Ramsberger initially ruled that the Pinellas Park curfew ordinance was unconstitutional. In a 2-1 opinion in May, the 2nd District Court of Appeal overturned that order and reinstated the curfew. The curfew resumed last July.

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