Most Influential 2018: Judge David O. Carter and attorney Brooke Weitzman force Orange County to address homelessness

Brooke Weitzman admits to a serious case of nerves back in February 2017 when she stepped into a certain ninth floor courtroom at the U.S. courthouse in Santa Ana.

A 2014 graduate of UCI School of Law, she’d been practicing public interest law a little over two years. Barely a few months had passed since she co-founded the nonprofit Elder Law & Disability Rights Center in Santa Ana.

This would be the first time Weitzman would bring a motion in federal court. And she’d be facing U.S. District Judge David O. Carter.

She knew Carter’s reputation as an unorthodox and indefatigable jurist. Still, she had no idea what to expect.

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Carter was battle-tested as a Marine wounded in the Vietnam War, where he earned a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts for his heroics.

A tough-minded idealist, he once said that when he finally retired, he’d “like to leave the bench with a legacy of having not lost my humanity.”

He doesn’t suffer fools or legal nonsense in his quest for solutions. He’s as hands-on as a judge can get. (Critics complain too much so.)

And here was Weitzman, less than half his age, on her own with a big ask: She wanted Carter to stop the county from seizing and destroying property belonging to homeless people living in tents on the Santa Ana River Trail.

Her more experienced co-counsels weren’t available to be there. She was challenging attorneys from the county on her own.

The session started in the early afternoon and continued hours past the time the courthouse closed. Vintage Carter.

Then the judge ordered everyone to join him early the next morning for an excursion.

Weitzman, thrown for a loop, reached her colleagues on the case by cellphone.

“I’m not sure what just happened,” she recalls saying. “But I’m sure we have to be in the riverbed at 6 a.m. because the judge is going to tell us what’s trash and what’s not.”

That day was a precursor to the frenzy of action that would unfold a year later in a different civil rights lawsuit Weitzman would file over an attempt to clear the riverbed of the tent encampments — again, overseen by Carter.

Carter would grant the 2017 restraining order and work out an agreement on determining what was personal property and what was trash.

But the judge warned then it was a stopgap. A long-term solution was needed to address the growing numbers of homeless people settling along the river trail and other hot spots in the county, including in the shadow of the federal courthouse at the Civic Center.

That’s what Weitzman wants, too: a solution that treats people who have no housing with dignity — not, as she sees it, like criminals ping-ponged from place to place by anti-camping laws.

The still evolving Orange County Catholic Worker vs. Orange County suit has set local communities on a path to address homelessness with the kind of compassionate approach and strategies for appropriate care that homeless advocates argue is needed for meaningful change.

It’s fair to say the sweep of what’s taking place likely would not be happening without the choreography of Carter, a veteran judge at 74, and the drive of Weitzman, a young attorney at 35.

For some reason, he calls her “Brooks” — not Brooke or Ms. Weitzman — in court. She always calls him “Your Honor.”

Riverbed litigation

The 2018 lawsuit, combined with another filed days later by Legal Aid Society of Orange County on behalf of disabled homeless clients at the riverbed, is the catalyst of what is widely considered to be a major turning point for Orange County.

Weitzman found herself back in Carter’s courtroom after filing a motion to stop the county from pushing off the bike trail what had swelled to about 1,000 homeless people. Tent encampments stretched along three miles of the trail near Angel Stadium, from Orange to Anaheim.

The cities of Anaheim, Costa Mesa and Orange were also named. Eventually, other communities became involved to one extent or another. An unexpected temporary solution involved placing hundreds of homeless people in motel rooms for 30 days.

Carter has said in court that Orange County may be creating a model of cooperation for the nation to follow.

Todd Spitzer, who is leaving his county post as 3rd District supervisor to become district attorney, concluded in an opinion piece published in early February that Carter “waved his magic wand and worked a miracle.”

Spitzer was referring to what he called “the most long overdue public policy discussion in our county” on how to help homeless people.

“Could it have happened without judicial intervention by a lawsuit and the federal court system, specifically Judge Carter?” he asked.

His conclusion: “I absolutely doubt it.”

Carter, who lives in Laguna Beach, has tried high-profile cases ranging from those involving the Mexican Mafia to Mattel Bratz dolls. His stamina and will are legendary.

“People wanted this to happen but they needed something to force them to do it,” Spitzer said in an interview earlier this month following his final board meeting.

Carter eagerly became that enforcer. He accepts no excuses from anyone, including Spitzer and other public officials.

With the homeless lawsuit, marathon days in court and at the riverbed would stretch late into the night. Carter walked the bike trail — and the civic center — cellphone camera at the ready. Sometimes he was joined by an entourage of attorneys, advocates, law enforcement and media. Other times, he visited unannounced.

“Having had the previous case in front of Judge Carter, I wasn’t surprised we were going to the riverbed,” Weitzman said. “But, I certainly did not imagine that we would all be out there from before the sun came up until after the sun went down. Every day. For weeks.”

Relentless

Asked to describe the judge in one word, Spitzer didn’t hesitate: relentless. But next came “competitive.”

Spitzer has known Carter since his days as a young prosecutor nearly three decades ago, and not just from the courtroom. He recalls a lunchtime running group that joined Carter, then a superior court judge, on five-mile daily runs.

“I remember trying to take the lead from him. I sped up and he would speed up,” Spitzer said, laughing at the memory of an all-out sprint. “I look down at his knees and his knee bone is like one inch ahead of mine.”

But Carter’s charm also made him the perfect candidate to officiate when Spitzer married in the mid-’90s. Carter graciously performed the ceremony twice — a quick civil service in his courtroom and later a more relaxed gathering that included family and friends.

“I had a relationship with him and I just really respected him,” Spitzer said.

That respect hasn’t diminished over the years, even when Carter called county officials and staff to task in court hearings for the way millions of dollars intended to alleviate homelessness was not being spent, or “chipmunked” in Carter’s more colorful description.

“He’s got incredible charisma,” Spitzer acknowledged. “Then he’s got this relentlessness combined with perseverance combined with this attribute that won’t let anybody off the hook.”

Spitzer also admires the way Weitzman handles herself, particularly her steadiness, whether dealing with clients, advocates or legal adversaries: “I just have been really impressed with her composure.”

Advocate

Weitzman, a native of Morristown, New Jersey, grew up in a comfortable middle class home with her parents and younger brother. Her father is a retired physician.

The few homeless people in her hometown didn’t bother anybody and were treated as part of the community. She developed an interest in access to housing and became convinced that real solutions would require legal action.

After college, Weitzman spent a year as an Americorps volunteer in Salt Lake City’s homeless shelters. Good at math, she worked a few years in currency trading before UCI and its emphasis on public interest law beckoned. She graduated in the school’s third class.

“I just have been really impressed with her composure.”

While at UCI, Weitzman would meet Los Angeles County-based attorney Carol Sobel, a longtime legal advocate for the rights of homeless people who is a mentor and critical ally as a co-counsel in the Orange County lawsuits.

Also preparing Weitzman: a two-year fellowship with Public Law Center in Santa Ana, where she helped military veterans deal with hurdles to housing, employment and benefits. She also benefits from elder law center co-founder Bill Wise’s experience at Legal Aid Society.

Almost always on the go, Weitzman often leaves behind a “graveyard of beverages” in her office — half-finished drinks ranging from coffee, soda and a juice blend perched on the edge of a table, far away from the pile of papers on her desk. She keeps several light jackets handy on a chair for last-minute dashes to court, grabbing one closest in color to the pants she’s wearing “so it looks like an actual suit.”

She lives in Tustin with her rescue dog, Comet. She began working out routinely at a gym this year, inadvertently thanks to Carter: “When I couldn’t keep up with the judge at the riverbed, I thought maybe it was time.”

Even with bad knees that keep Carter from jogging anymore, Weitzman says “his walking is a lot like my running.”

The big picture

As a result of the lawsuit, temporary shelters that can house up to 400 people have opened with lightning speed the past few weeks in Santa Ana and Anaheim, the two places in Orange County hardest hit by homeless people living in the streets.

What Weitzman set in legal motion, Carter continues to oversee with close scrutiny — he was out this month during a sweep of an encampment along railroad tracks in Santa Ana. Two weeks later, he was at an Anaheim park along with Weitzman and Sobel during efforts to convince homeless people to go to a shelter.

Future plans call for larger, long-term shelters in both cities, while smaller facilities are planned in Buena Park, Costa Mesa, Placentia and Tustin. Further legal action is planned to bring south county communities into the effort to provide more shelter beds and services.

The outreach-first handling of homeless people living on the streets is expected to proceed under guidelines agreed to in Carter’s courtroom — and in compliance with legal precedent set by an Idaho appellate case decided this year.

Weitzman pushed for the shift away from tickets, arrests and jail time that, in her eyes, criminalize homeless people. Carter has said he wants people treated humanely, but has warned that lawbreakers won’t be coddled.

Weitzman anticipates that by sometime next year there will be enough beds in the north and central parts of Orange County to accommodate almost everyone there who is unsheltered. In the meantime, the elder law center continues to handle hundreds of text messages, emails, phone calls and other exchanges with homeless people and advocates, opposing attorneys, the media, and others.

“In the day to day, it is easy for me to see the places in which individuals are being failed or be frustrated with the places where I can’t get someone into a shelter or the system bottlenecks,” says Weitzman, whose voicemail box is typically full.

“But I do often kind of step back and look at the big picture. It is absolutely a landmark case, both here and nationally.”