ESCONDIDO -- Citing concerns about free speech rights, the American Civil Liberties Union is pressuring Escondido city officials to end a longtime policy of forcing political and religious groups to pay higher fees for city meeting rooms than other organizations.

"All groups have a particular perspective, and this policy discriminates against political and religious groups for their particular perspective," said David Blair-Loy, legal director for the local affiliate of the civil liberties organization. "The city needs to rewrite their policy based on criteria that do not violate the First Amendment."

Blair-Loy sent City Attorney Jeff Epp a five-page letter Wednesday night detailing what he described as the meeting room policy's "viewpoint discrimination" and its vague definition of political and religious groups.

Epp said Thursday that he'll analyze the letter and the city's meeting room policy to see if Blair-Loy's position "has any merit."

Blair-Loy said Escondido's policy came to the attention of his agency last week, when city officials notified a coalition of mobile-home park residents that they could no longer use city meeting rooms for free because they had mutated from a homeowners association into a political group.

The residents contend the move was retaliation for a campaign they launched in June to subject Escondido council members to term limits.

But city officials said the change was based on the increasingly political nature of the newsletter published by the mobile-home residents, who call themselves the Escondido Manufactured/Mobile Homeowners Positive Action Committee.

Blair-Loy said that the civil-liberties organization was not concerned at all with the retaliation charges, but had chosen to represent the mobile-home residents because the city's policy violates their free speech rights.

The city's policy divides groups into tiers based on a variety of factors, including whether their members live in Escondido and whether the group is a business.

Scouts, Little League baseball and other youth sports pay somewhere between nothing and $25 per hour for rooms, while service clubs and homeowners associations pay $15 to $30 per hour for meeting rooms. Groups from outside the city, political organizations and religious groups pay $25 to $55 per hour.

Because the mobile-home residents meet from 6 to 9 p.m. on the last Thursday of every month in the East Valley Community Center, the city's reclassification of their group would increase their monthly fee from $60 to $120.

But the group is actually facing an even larger increase because city officials have not been charging them $60. They had been "grandfathered" in at no fees because they have been around for so long, said Robin Bettin, the city's assistant director of community services.

Blair-Loy said another problem was that the city's policy explicitly states that the motive for charging fees is to recover operating and maintenance costs. So it makes no sense to charge political and religious groups higher fees unless their meetings increase the city's operating and maintenance costs, he said.

"Political and religious groups do not create any more litter and they do not increase the risk of damage," said Blair-Loy. "I don't think you could make the case that they spill more coffee in city meeting rooms."

Blair-Loy said the city is allowed to have a meeting-room policy that discriminates between groups, but he said the discrimination must not be based on the viewpoint of the group or the content of their message.

For example, the policy could charge lower fees to nonprofits than for-profit groups and it could charge out-of-town groups more than Escondido organizations, he said.

Carlsbad and Vista also charge political and religious groups higher meeting room fees, but Poway and Oceanside do not charge higher fees to such groups. Efforts to determine the meeting room policies of other North County cities were unsuccessful on Thursday.

Contact staff writer David Garrick at (760) 740-5468 or dgarrick@nctimes.com.