N.Y. homeless can’t sleep on sidewalk beside church The Layman Volume 35, Number 1 Posted February 8, 2002 After being informed that the city had more than enough shelters to sleep, counsel and feed New York’s homeless people at night, a federal judge ordered Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church to stop letting them sleep on the sidewalk in front of the church. Attorneys for the church argued that the state law requiring homeless people to spend nights in indoor shelters violated the constitutional protection of freedom of religion. But Judge Lawrence McKenna of the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that homeless people could sleep inside the church or on its steps, but not on the sidewalk next to the building. Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, which is in one of the toniest sections of the city, took the matter to court after police rousted homeless people from the sidewalk to enforce the law that was enacted while Rudy Giuliani was mayor. Giuliani sought the legislation as part of a sweeping reform effort to clear the streets and subways of homeless people – both for their protection and the public’s. The Giuliani campaign required ample space in public and private shelters, where homeless people would receive other services, including health and job counseling. But Fifth Avenue Church, which has a 10-bed shelter inside its building, argued that requiring people to go into a shelter infringed on their rights – and the right of the church to see things that way as part of its “religious freedom.” In his first ruling, on a request for a temporary injunction, McKenna prohibited enforcement of the state law. Giuliani called that decision “very inhumane … It must be the product of some kind of misapplied ideology,” according to The New York Times. Giuliani said the judge should have ordered the homeless people to stay inside the church’s building. The case boiled down to a matter of preferences, not the care of the homeless. The attorney for Fifth Avenue said the people who slept on the church’s steps and spilled out onto the public sidewalk did not like to enter shelters. Daniel S. Connolly, who represented the city at the Jan. 18 hearing on the request for a temporary injunction against enforcement of the law, told McKenna that Fifth Avenue was “basically running the world’s worst homeless shelter.” The final decision by McKenna Jan. 4 was hailed as a victory by both sides. The city expressed its satisfaction that New York police have the authority to regulate the city’s sidewalks and the church said it was satisfied that the court had recognized its services to the homeless as “religious conduct.”

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