Tag Archives: First Amendment to the United States Constitution

Wyoming Supreme Court rules last year’s ban on Jackson’s abortion protest unconstitutional

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Wyoming Supreme Court rules last year’s ban on Jackson’s abortion protest unconstitutional | The Republic.

A state court order that barred abortion protesters from appearing at Jackson’s town square last year violated the protesters’ constitutional rights, the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

In a lengthy 3-2 decision, the state Supreme Court ruled the temporary restraining order issued by District Judge Timothy Day violated the First Amendment rights of protesters with the group Operation Save America.

Dozens of members of Operation Save America, based in Concord, N.C., descended on Jackson last May with graphic signs of aborted fetuses that they showed around town.

The group said it picked Jackson for its campaign in an effort to make Wyoming the first state in which no doctors would provide abortions. The group targeted a family practitioner whom it said was the only doctor in the state to offer abortions.

Wondering why they do not wish this honor bestowed upon their native state? 

The restraining order that Jackson secured from Day last year barred the protesters from appearing within two blocks of the town square. The town’s lawyer told Day that city police feared violence if the protesters came together with about 200 Boy Scouts and their families who were gathering for Elkfest, an annual auction of elk antlers.

The protesters weren’t alerted beforehand that the town was seeking the court order.

“Assuming the town had established a compelling interest in the protection of its youth and in maintaining the peace, we would nonetheless find the temporary restraining order unconstitutional,” Justice Michael Golden wrote for the court majority. “The town has not met its burden of establishing that the temporary restraining order ban was necessary to serve the town’s interest and that less restrictive measures would not have been adequate.”

Chief Justice Marilyn S. Kite and Justice William U. Hill wrote a dissent saying they believed the case was moot and that the constitutionality question shouldn’t have reached the court.

“No evidence was presented in this case that Operation Save America will return to Jackson and attempt to assemble or display posters during another scheduled event such as the Boy Scouts expo and auction or, in the event it does, that the town will again file for a temporary restraining order without providing notice and an opportunity to be heard,” Kite and Hill stated.

Rusty Thomas of Waco, Texas, is assistant director of operations for Operation Save America. He said Tuesday his group intends to return to Jackson next month. “I just got the news, and just tears of rejoicing,” he said of the court ruling. “The timing is incredible.”

Thomas said the group believes the ruling “strikes a blow for liberty and puts our government, both the federal and state authorities, on notice that the First Amendment is alive and well in the United States of America.”

Flip Benham, director of Operation Save America in Concord, said Tuesday the group has applied to the town of Jackson for permits to hand out materials next month but hasn’t received them yet.

“What they’ve done is put us off. They’ve said they’re going through new criteria for permits,” Benham said. He said the group’s experience in Jackson was the first time it has ever been restrained “from presenting the gospel.”

Attempts to reach town officials were not immediately successful Tuesday.

Audrey Cohen-Davis, lawyer for the town, argued before the Wyoming Supreme Court in November that it was proper for the town to secure the restraining order.

“Parents taking their Boy Scouts to the Elkfest event did not expect to have a group subjecting their children to such material,” Cohen-Davis said in November.

Jack Edwards, a lawyer in Etna, represented Operation Save America.

“I think it’s important to realize that the First Amendment, and the cases from the U.S. Supreme Court that have interpreted that amendment, were not to protect speech that people welcome and that people enjoy, but the basis for that amendment is to protect speech that causes arguments and dissent in the public square,” Edwards said Tuesday.

The state supreme court ruling comes just days after the state of Wyoming reached a settlement with another anti-abortion group, WyWatch Family Action.

In the agreement approved last week by U.S. District Judge Nancy Freudenthal of Cheyenne, Wyoming admitted it violated WyWatch’s constitutional rights by removing anti-abortion placards from a tunnel leading to the state Capitol during last year’s legislative session.

The state agreed to pay WyWatch $1 in nominal damages and $30,000 in attorney fees. WyWatch was represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, a national advocacy group for social conservatives.

Freudenthal allowed the American Civil Liberties Union to enter the WyWatch case to argue on the group’s behalf that the state had violated the group’s constitutional rights. Linda Burt, director of the Wyoming ACLU, said Tuesday that the courts decided both cases correctly by protecting public speech.

“While we disagree with both of the organizations involved in these cases, we firmly respect their right to discuss these issues in the public square,” Burt said. “The remedy for speech that you disagree with is more speech, and more debate and more information, and disallowing this kind of speech that you disagree with does not support that.”

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“Better to Remain Silent and be Thought a Fool, Than to Speak and Remove all Doubt” | Green Mountain Scribes

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“Better to Remain Silent and be Thought a Fool, Than to Speak and Remove all Doubt” | Green Mountain Scribes.

By Alan Sexton, Green Mountain Scribes

"The Thinker"While we might not always agree with the rhetoric or expressions of others, as Americans, our intrinsic right to speak and otherwise express freely is nonetheless protected from governmental censorship within the First Amendment to the painstakingly created, ingenious, and timelessly applicable Constitution of the United States. This begs the question: are we always best served by exercising these rights?

Along with the rapid proliferation and ever-growing popularity of wonderfully interactive media such asblogs and other websites, and social media powerhouses such as Facebook comes the benefit of adding our “two cents” on the topics at hand-usually a good thing, but not always.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. ~ Variously attributed, sourced to Proverbs 17:28

Invariably, we all have read comments made on published articles on blogs and websites, and posts on social media sites that leave many among us stunned by the apparent willingness of others to, presumably unwittingly but nonetheless very effectively proclaim ignorance.

Now, for any who reactively take offense with my insertion of the word ignorance, please understand that, in context herein, I intend ignorance to mean an unwittingly permitted, but nevertheless apparent disinterest in acquiring knowledge or education. Plainly stated, I mean the act of anywhere commenting on a published or posted topic as if authoritative, yet the comment only and unfortunately conveying a knee jerk reaction to a headline rather than even remotely conveying any sound knowledge of, or even relevance to, the particular issue at hand.

A young boy wearing a dunce cap in class, from a staged photo c.1906An embarrassing and very public act of self-humiliation. Not that any among us are innocent of committing this foolish act at one time or another, I’ve done it too. Yet, like many others I long ago choose to make every effort to avoid the temptation to advertise myself to the world as an ignorant reactionary, a fool.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not. ~Samuel Johnson

Unfortunately, this very human but self-marginalizing tendency to offer uninformed knee jerk reactions to issues is only part of the problem. Likely, we have also observed and/or otherwise been subjected to self-marginalizing , self-humiliating, and wholly unconstructive instances of name-calling.

Understand that when we give in to our anger and attempt to personally insult others, whether aimed at sociopolitical leaders or those we are engaged in discourse with, we only make ourselves appear mean and foolish, subsequently and rightfully discounted by the vast majority of reasonable people. Name calling and otherwise personally insulting others is a hallmark of stupidity, or willful ignorance, and only debases the inherent dignity of insulter.

The kindest word in all the world is the unkind word, unsaid. ~Author Unknown

No laws or even our individually and worthily made efforts will ever eradicate blissful ignorance or stupidity, and it is foolish to believe that such will. Still, we should always make every effort to do so, and this begins with each one of us prudently exercising self-restraint, and fostering within and responding to our very natural appetite for acquiring knowledge and then-and only then-constructively contribute to the public discourse our uniquely important perspectives which are then based on knowledge we have endeavored to acquire.

Words to live by over at the WordPress Blog: Green Mountain Scribes

Are ‘tea party’ rallies given preferential treatment by police? – CSMonitor.com

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Are ‘tea party’ rallies given preferential treatment by police? – CSMonitor.com.

The constitutionality of protest rules was called into question after a tea party rally was allowed full-size flag poles and signs on wooden sticks, which antiwar protesters are often barred from using.

“Tea party” activists successfully lobbied security officials in Raleigh, N.C., last Thursday to reverse a ban on carrying full-sized flagpoles and signs at a tax day rally. Antiwar protesters, however, argue that they’re often not afforded such luxuries.

Do tea party activists get preferential treatment from law enforcement officials? They have been able to carry guns to anti-Obama rallies, critics note, suggesting that there is a double standard.

Parade permitting rules vary widely from town to town and city to city, with the Supreme Court giving law enforcement broad authority to uphold public safety.

To be sure, permitting rules and police preparedness are often developed based on past behavior at various kinds of protests. Many go back to the 1960s and 1970s when violent rallies erupted over the Vietnam War. Such protests sprung up again during the presidency of George W. Bush, when protesters clashed with police in New York City and elsewhere during large-scale demonstrations against the Middle East wars. With tea party rallies so far proving more orderly, police have given them more latitude.

For the most part, application of those rules doesn’t infringe on the constitutional right to free speech, says Iraq War veteran Adam Kokesh, who has organized both antiwar protests and tea party protests and is now running for Congress in New Mexico‘s Third district.

That doesn’t mean the complaint about different treatment for different ralliers is off-base, however. The more loosely such permitting restrictions are written, the more bias can – and does – seep into the approval process, says Mr. Kokesh.

“Certainly antiwar protests are on the whole more rambunctious than tea party rallies, so there is an appropriate role for law enforcement to exercise a certain amount of discretion in how they approach protesters,” says Kokesh. “But there are times when regulation or individual action by law enforcement crosses the line and there’s a blatant show of favoritism.”

Robert Richards, a First Amendment scholar at Penn State University, agrees. “Municipalities cannot engage in viewpoint-based discrimination,” he says. “There is some latitude that’s given police in order to protect public safety, but if it gets down to a determination based on the message, it’s a huge issue as far as the First Amendment is concerned.”

Alarm around tea party protests cropped up last year when tea partiers began showing up armed. One much-publicized incident involved a man who carried a high-powered rifle to an anti-Obama rally close to where the president was speaking in Phoenix. The man was not breaking any laws, and the Secret Service said Obama was never in danger.

“If a gun is legal, you can’t raise a First Amendment issue if someone is using a gun for symbolic expression,” says Mr. Richards. “But if somebody can point to a specific municipality where police and municipal officials allowed somebody from one group to carry a weapon and not somebody from another group, that would raise a constitutional issue.”

Kokesh says local rules and even customs decide most of what is allowed and what isn’t at a political protest. There was no evidence, for example, that any tea partiers who rallied on the Mall last Thursday were carrying weapons, given Washington‘s strict gun policies. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be unusual to see someone open-carrying a gun at a rally in Farmington, N.M., where they are commonplace in public places.

In Raleigh, public safety officials, who had created the “no-flagpole” rule last September, dropped the rule after the rally drew national attention. Whether that courtesy will ultimately be extended to antiwar or immigration protesters remains to be seen.

Though free speech usually prevails, the question of bias in how protesters are treated by elected officials and police is still an important one, insists Kokesh.

“To say that ‘you can have signs with wooden poles, but you we’re afraid of so you can’t have them‘ is not acceptable to me,” he says. “The fact is, law enforcement’s attitudes toward protesters generally reflect the the political inclination [of police], which tends to be pro-government and a little more conservative. So the more uniform the regulations are and the more clearly expressed the standards are, the more fair and equitable [the protests are],” he says.

A visitor to my blog, from the WordPress Blog, The Mashed Potato Bulletin, which you can find here: The Mashed Potato Bulletin brought up a good point regarding protestors of “Occupy Wall Street” vs. the protesters at Tea Party Rallies.  Most pointedly, how the two are treated so differently, with Tea Partiers even bring GUNS to rallies.  Hmm……So, I am on the prowl for articles about just this difference.  If you come across any or know of any, please, feel free to send them to me!  Also interested in reactions to the Occupy Movement by the Tea Party.  Would be very interested.