2nd Suit Accuses Magic Mountain of Anti-Latino Bias

A civil liberties group has filed a second lawsuit challenging security policies at Six Flags Magic Mountain, charging that five Latinos were barred from the amusement park because of their ethnic background.

The suit seeks unspecified damages for the family of Joe Hernandez, a San Gabriel truck driver. It also asks that the amusement park in Valencia be prohibited from searching patrons under a security system designed with help from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Park officials have repeatedly said the screening system is needed to weed out troublemakers and possible gang members.

The suit was filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of Hernandez; his wife, Maria Hernandez; his 16-year-old son, Dennis; and two adult daughters, Sonia Hernandez and Susie Gongura.

It was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California, which charged in a suit April 18 that four Latinos from Hawthorne were unjustly accused of being gang members before Magic Mountain security guards ordered them to leave park grounds on Easter Sunday, 1987.

Carol A. Sobel, an ACLU attorney, said Wednesday that the Hernandez family contacted the ACLU after hearing about the first lawsuit.

According to the suit filed Tuesday, the Hernandez family, joined by cousins and several friends, tried to enter Magic Mountain on July 4, 1987. In all, there were 17 people in a three-car caravan.

Sobel said that a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who was screening cars at the park entrance let Joe Hernandez’s car pass but told the second car in the caravan to pull over to an inspection area, where park security guards questioned and searched the car’s occupants.

Joe Hernandez went to the inspection area to ask what was the matter, Sobel said. After Hernandez complained about the treatment his family received, he was told to leave Magic Mountain. A park employee told the Hernandezes they weren’t the kind of people Magic Mountain wanted in the park, Sobel said.

Sherrie Bang, a park spokeswoman, would not comment on the suit, saying Magic Mountain attorneys had not yet seen it. But Bang repeated the park’s defense of its screening policies.

“We stand by everything that we’ve been saying for months,” Bang said. “We think we’re doing the right thing. There’s nothing discriminatory in our policies.”

The park’s tough screening policies were adopted after six people were stabbed and 21 were arrested in a 1985 melee involving three San Fernando Valley gangs.

The latest lawsuit marks the third time this year that Magic Mountain has been accused of discriminatory admission policies. On March 12, nine black members of a Christian youth group from San Diego said that, because of their race, they were searched before being admitted to the park. Magic Mountain denied that the searches were racially motivated. No lawsuit has been filed in that incident.

The first suit against the amusement park, filed on behalf of a Hawthorne family also named Hernandez, awaits action in U.S. District Court. The family claims the park violated federal civil rights laws, and Magic Mountain requested that the case be heard in federal court.