SANTA ANA – An Orange County Superior Court judge on Tuesday upheld a trespassing claim brought by a Laguna Beach cafe against seven Muslim women who alleged they were targeted and humiliated when forced to leave.

The women in May filed a civil rights lawsuit against Urth Caffe, alleging they were discriminated against and asked to leave because they were wearing hijabs, or traditional headscarves. The cafe owner denied the allegation and filed a countersuit accusing the women of trespassing after they were asked to leave and rude behavior.

Judge John C. Gastelum denied the women’s motion to dismiss the trespassing claim, so Urth Caffe’s claim will go forward.

“(The women) failed to meet their initial burden to demonstrate that their act underlying cross-complainants’ trespass was an act in furtherance of right of petition or free speech,” Gastelum wrote in a tentative ruling.

It was the first time a judge has looked at the case since attorneys on both sides filed complaints following the April 22 incident. Gastelum set a trial date for September 2017.

Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney for the women, was unavailable for comment Tuesday.

But at a press conference in May, he said the women denied they broke the trespass law because they followed orders by the police.

“We view their cross-complaint as a mechanism to question the motivation of the women who came to Urth Caffé to have a good time and a further attempt to scare them not to pursue their lawsuit,” he said about the cafe owners.

David Yerushalmi, founder of the American Freedom Law Center, who represents cafe owners Shallom Berkman and his wife, Jilla Berkman, said he was happy with the ruling.

“The plantiffs claim that their trespass is somehow protected or immune from liability is incorrect,” Yerushalmi said. “Their underlying claim of discrimination is entirely fraudulent. (If) you walk into a restaurant and complain about its service and then refuse to leave, you are trespassing. Only after they were asked to leave did they claim discrimination.”

The trespass suit followed on the heels of a lawsuit filed by the seven women who alleged they were subjected to religious discrimination when Urth Caffé staff, with assistance from Laguna Beach police officers, asked them to leave when the women refused to abide by the café’s seating policy.

The women met at Urth Caffe for dinner, dessert and coffee. They selected seats on the outside patio, near the entrance of the restaurant. Six of the women were wearing hijabs.

At about 8:15 p.m., Soondus Ahmed, one of the litigants, said her group was asked to leave for violating a restaurant policy of sitting at a table longer than 45 minutes after eating or ordering. Surrounding them were at least 20 open tables, she said.

The women, represented by three attorneys, said at a press conference in April that they were singled out and told to leave Urth Caffé because they appeared to be Muslim.

Tajsar said at the time that Urth Caffé staff “targeted these women as a way of cleansing their location of women that appeared to be Muslim to appease the Islamaphobia in a predominantly white Laguna Beach community.”

Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@scng.com or on Twitter:@lagunaini