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MONDAY, AUGUST 11-AUGUST 17, 2025
VOL. 14,
NO. 236
LA County board sets maximum indoor temperature for rental units
Trump’s war on big law means it’s harder to challenge the administration
By Joe Taglieri
By Molly Redden, ProPublica
joet@beaconmedianews.com
This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
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Fair housing advocate Jannet Torres, at podium, joins LA County Supervisors Lindsey Horvath, second from right, and Hilda Solis to announce the board’s approval of a law requiring a maximum temperature of 82 degrees in rental units. | Photo courtesy of Supervisor Hilda Solis’ office
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he Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday required all residential rental units in unincorporated areas to have a maximum indoor temperature of 82 degrees. The ordinance, which passed on a 4-0 vote with Supervisor Kathryn Barger absent, also requires landlords to allow tenants to install portable cooling devices and other methods to control the temperature in rental units, including air-conditioners, fans and blackout curtains. That requirement is expected to take effect in 30 days, but enforcement of the overall 82-degree maximum temperature requirement will not begin until Jan. 1, 2027. “We know that extreme heat is not just uncomfortable. It is deadly,” Supervi-
sor Hilda Solis, who introduced the motion to amend the county’s Health and Safety Code, said in a statement. “As climate change accelerates, our communities are on the front lines of intensifying heat waves. This ordinance is a critical, life-saving policy that prioritizes the health and dignity of renters, many of whom are children, older adults, people with disabilities and immigrant working families living in aging buildings without cooling.” The ordinance will require the maximum temperature of 82 degrees in all habitable rooms of a rental unit beginning Jan. 1, 2027. An amendment by Supervisor Janice Hahn allows “small property landlords” to maintain the 82-degree
limit “in at least one habitable room.” Housing advocates and county residents who attended the meeting urged the board to reject the amendment so that the maximum temperature standard applies to all rental units in unincorporated areas. Hahn countered that smaller landlords will be required to limit the temperature in all habitable rooms by Jan. 1, 2032. Hahn said her compromise gives smaller landlords “a longer onramp” to achieve the cooling goal. In a statement following the board’s vote, Chelsea Kirk, director of policy and advocacy for Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, said Hahn “introduced this
exception at the last minute, and it was supported by landlord lobbyist groups. Even more worrying, landlords can self-certify as ‘small landlords,’ and Los Angeles County does not have the resources to verify their claim.” Kirk also noted concerns “that this exception will mean the ordinance is inequitably applied. In South Los Angeles and other areas with low-income renters of color, there are many older buildings owned by small landlords. Their renters especially need a right to cooling, as they are disproportionately impacted by extreme heat and live in properties that have not been upgraded to withstand climate change.”
See Maximum temperature Page 28
wo weeks into President Donald Trump’s second presidency, and just days after he pardoned hundreds of Capitol rioters, officials Trump had placed in charge of the Justice Department made a sweeping demand. They wanted the names of the thousands of FBI employees who had played a role in investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Fearing mass firings, or worse, retaliation by the people they helped prosecute, a group of agents scrambled to enlist a legal team who could stop the administration in court. Norm Eisen, a prominent ethics lawyer now leading dozens of lawsuits against the Trump administration, agreed within hours to represent the agents pro bono, along with Mark Zaid, a veteran whistleblower attorney. For more firepower, the two approached the giant Chicago-based law firm Winston & Strawn, which has a history of providing free representation to people and organizations that squared off against Trump’s first administration. But Winston declined to represent the FBI agents, three people with knowledge of the matter said. It was one of several cases Winston turned down in quick succession, they added, that would have pitted the firm against an openly retributive president. Some of the country’s largest law firms have declined to represent clients challenging the Trump administration, more than a dozen attorneys and nonprofit leaders told ProPublica, while others have sought to avoid any clients See Big law Page 07
that Trump might perceive as his enemies. That includes both clients willing to pay the firms’ steep rates, and those who receive free representation. Big Law firms are also refusing to take on legal work involving environmental protections, LGBTQ+ rights and police accountability or to represent elected Democrats and federal workers purged in Trump’s war on the “deep state.” Advocacy groups say this is beginning to hamper their efforts to challenge the Trump administration. Their fears intensified after Trump signed a battery of executive orders aimed at punishing top firms over old associations with his adversaries. But as the Winston episode shows, Big Law began to back away from some clients almost the minute he returned to power. The country’s top firms remain deeply wary, even though the president has lost all four initial court challenges to those executive orders. “The President’s Policy is working as designed,” said a lawsuit the American Bar Association filed against the administration in June. “Even as federal judges have ruled over and over that the Law Firm Orders are plainly unconstitutional, law firms that once proudly contributed thousands of hours of pro bono work to a host of causes — including causes championed by the ABA — have withdrawn from such work because it is disfavored by the Administration.” The bar association itself has struggled to find representation, the lawsuit said.