Relation passed to #or must be structurally compatible. Incompatible values: [:references]

There is a known issue about it on Github.

According to this comment you might want to override the structurally_incompatible_values_for_or to overcome the issue:

def structurally_incompatible_values_for_or(other)
  Relation::SINGLE_VALUE_METHODS.reject { |m| send("#{m}_value") == other.send("#{m}_value") } +
    (Relation::MULTI_VALUE_METHODS - [:eager_load, :references, :extending]).reject { |m| send("#{m}_values") == other.send("#{m}_values") } +
    (Relation::CLAUSE_METHODS - [:having, :where]).reject { |m| send("#{m}_clause") == other.send("#{m}_clause") }
end

Also there is always an option to use SQL:

@items
  .joins(:orders)
  .where("orders.user_id = ? OR items.available = true", current_user.id)

You can write the query in this good old way to avoid error

@items = @items.joins(:orders).where("items.available = ? OR orders.user_id = ?", true, current_user.id)

Hope that helps!