Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California said that settlement negotiations delayed the trial, scheduled to begin Aug. 19, that pitted La Asociacion De Trabajadores De Lake Forest against the sheriff’s department, the former and current chiefs of police services for the city and a deputy.

The city of Lake Forest was initially among those sued, but it repealed its anti-solicitation ordinance, and was later dropped from the suit.

The lawsuit continued against the sheriff’s defendants, the ACLU’s Hector Villagra said, because the 50 or 60 day laborers who gather in industrial areas of the city continued to be harassed.

The agreement that was reached to end the litigation is precedent- setting, said Tessie Borden of the ACLU.

The case, she said, “was not just a challenge of an existing ordinance. This goes further, establishing an existing and inviolable right. The officers are saying (under terms of the agreement) that people have a right to offer themselves for work.”

They also affirm the right of contractors to solicit workers in public areas of the city as long as no law is violated, she said.

According to the ACLU statement, the sheriff’s department does not discourage the free expression of any individual’s constitutional rights, including the right to peaceably assemble on public sidewalks and express availability to work. It is, and has been, the policy of the sheriff’s department to enforce the law without bias to gender, race, ethnicity of socioeconomic standing.

ACLU attorney Belinda Escobasa Helzer said the settlement is significant because a major law enforcement agency has affirmed the rights of the day laborers and contractors seeking to hire them.