In Re Arata

THE COURT.

Habeas corpus

to determine the right of respondent to detain petitioner and deprive her of her liberty. Upon return being made to the writ and hearing had thereon, petitioner’s prayer was granted and her discharge ordered by decision heretofore made from the bench. That the reasons for the decision may be made to fully appear, this opinion is now filed.

In thé petition filed herein it was alleged that respondent, chief of police, detained and confined in the city prison of Los Angeles the petitioner, and that said detention and imprisonment was without process of law or lawful authority. It was further alleged that petitioner was arrested without a warrant, by persons claiming to be police officers of the city of Los Angeles, on the ninth day of April, 1921, and that two days later a complaint was filed in the police court charging petitioner with a violation of the provisions of an ordinance of said city, which ordinance, stating its terms generally, was one making it an offense for a woman to commit an .act of prostitution. The petition further set out that thereupon the petitioner was arraigned in said police court, entered a plea of not guilty, and that her trial was set for a certain date; that bail was fixed in the sum of fifty dollars, which, it was alleged, petitioner furnished, and that she thereupon secured an order from said police court directing her discharge from custody pending said trial; that the written order of release so secured was presented to the jailer of the Los Angeles city jail ,and that the jailer refused to discharge said person for the reason, as stated by him, that the health department of the city of Los Angeles had instructed the jailer and chief of police not to release petitioner until she had submitted to an examination desired to be made by said health department for the purpose of determining whether she was infected with a communicable, infectious or quarantinable disease. In the petition it was further asserted that petitioner was not infected with any such disease; that the health department of the city of Los Angeles had no reason to believe that she was so infected; that she had never been theretofore arrested or charged with any crime; that she was not, and never had been, a prostitute, and did not com

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mit the act charged against her by the complaint in the police court. Upon the alleged facts so stated no question can be made but that petitioner’s detention by the chief of police was wholly unauthorized and without any warrant in law. In the return made to the writ respondent admitted that petitioner was being detained by him in said city jail and then proceeded to narrate alleged facts in evidentiary form as to a certain police officer having been directed to a room occupied by petitioner wherein petitioner offered to ■commit an act of sexual intercourse with said officer and fixed a price therefor, which the officer paid, whereupon other officers, acting in conjunction with the first, broke in the door and arrested petitioner. The return next set out the terms of the ordinance which purports to make the commission of the alleged act an offense. The return further set forth that immediately upon being arrested said petitioner was “by order of the health department of said city,” placed in a quarantine ward in the city jail and there held “in quarantine to be examined by officers of the health department of said city, to determine her freedom from contagious or infectious quarantinable venereal disease, as provided by statute and the rules of the state board of health of the state of California.” It was further stated in said return that a physician duly appointed as a medical examiner of women by the health department of said city and by order of the health commissioner visited petitioner for the purpose of making a medical examination to determine the existence of any such disease as has been described, and that petitioner refused to submit to the examination, and that the health commissioner ordered that she be, held in quarantine pending the determination of her freedom from such disease. Further statement is made in the return that “the health department of the city of Los Angeles has determined from experience in a large number of cases that over ninety per cent of all women apprehended in the commission of acts of prostitution are infected with contagious or infectious quarantinable venereal disease such as is enumerated, in section 2979a, Political Code; that the rules of the state board of health adopted pursuant to section 2979, Political Code, require that the health commissioner of the city of Los Angeles cause examination to be made of all such persons to determine their freedom from