JUDGE SAYS ANTIOCH CAN'T BAR DRUG REHAB CLINIC

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A federal judge says civil rights law allows a
methadone clinic to move into a residential neighborhood of suburban
Antioch, despite the city's claim that it would be unsafe.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston's ruling, barring Antioch from enforcing
an ordinance that was intended to keep the clinic away from homes, should
enable the drug rehabilitation program to buy a former medical building and
move in, the clinic's lawyer said Monday.

Her ruling followed a federal appeals court's decision last June prohibiting
Antioch, and other cities, from discriminating against drug treatment
clinics and other facilities for the disabled when making zoning decisions.
The court said cities can base zoning restrictions on serious dangers to the
public.

City Attorney Bill Galstan said he would discuss the case Tuesday evening
with the City Council, which will decide whether to appeal. He said cities
in California and other states have been following the case closely,
although Illston's ruling applies only to Antioch, a community in northern
Contra Costa County.

The clinic, which provides methadone as a maintenance drug to about 300
heroin addicts, operated in a courthouse in nearby Pittsburg for 13 years
but had to move in 1998 because the county needed the space.

While occupying temporary quarters, the clinic arranged to buy the former
medical building in Antioch, near public transportation and close to its
patients. But after neighbors complained, the City Council passed an
emergency ordinance prohibiting methadone clinics within 500 feet of
residential property.

Illston refused to block enforcement of the ordinance in August 1998 but was
ordered to reconsider the case last June by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals. The court said the zoning ordinance discriminated against the
disabled and could be justified only if the clinic would cause severe harm
to the community.

Illston ruled last Thursday that the clinic had shown no such harm was
likely. She said testimony at a two-day hearing last September showed that
methadone makes addicts less dangerous, by reducing their craving for
illegal heroin.

Despite criticism of the Pittsburg clinic by that city's police chief,
Illston found no evidence to connect the clinic or other methadone clinics
with increased crime in neighboring areas. She also rejected the city's
argument that heroin addicts lose their protection under the federal
disability law when they use methadone as a treatment.

Amitai Schwartz, lawyer for the clinic, said the ruling reflected evidence
that a well-run methadone clinic, treating local residents, can make a
community safer, despite neighbors' understandable fears of drug addicts.

Galstan, the city's lawyer, said its case was made more difficult by the
appeals court's insistence that only a significant threat to community
safety justified a zoning restriction. But he said the city believed it met
the standard with evidence of drug-dealing, loitering and other anti-social
behavior in the vicinity of methadone clinics.