10-December-2004 -- EWTNews Brief
WASHINGTON DC, USA, December 10 (CNA) - Pro-life
demonstrators, who were arrested at a Kansas City intersection in June 2001
because of the complaints of passers-by that their graphic signs of an aborted
unborn child were offensive, are hoping, after losing a federal civil rights
lawsuit against the Kansas City police in a district court and then an 8th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals, that their First Amendment complaint will be heard by
the Supreme Court.
In an interview with CNS News, Francis J. Manion, senior counsel for the
American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), who represent the demonstrators,
said that "this is an important case involving the constitutional rights of
those who oppose abortion to be able to speak out freely without being
punished."
According to the ACLJ the 8th Circuit ruling contradicts precedents set by
First Amendment rulings by the Supreme Court which protect offensive speech.
Manion said that the cops allowed the demonstrators to stay "if they put
the offensive signs" away, even though the entire demonstration was
legitimate: "What you had was the cops deciding, just at the behest of
random passersby, what could or could not be said or displayed on that street
corner. And that's clearly unconstitutional," he said.
He asserted that "the constitutional right to free speech lacks all
vitality if it can be suppressed for so flimsy a reason as that the content of
the message ... is distracting or disturbing to motorists... rare indeed is the
[demonstration] that will not annoy and distract some passersby."
The police officers had "observed that traffic was heavy and was being
affected by the demonstration," and then charged the demonstrators with
violating regulations which say it is "unlawful for any person to ... stand
... either alone or in concert with others in a public place, in such a manner
so as to [o]bstruct any public street, public highway."
When the police dropped the charges, the demonstrators filed their lawsuit in
which the district court decided that the officers "had reasonably
interpreted the ordinance as prohibiting conduct that distracted motorists and
thereby obstructed a public street by impeding the safe flow of traffic."
The First Amendment "does not entitle citizens to create safety
hazards," they said.
When the district court decision was upheld by the Appeals court, Judge C.
Arlen Beam, saying that his colleages had created a "heckler's veto"
which allowed the government to restrict free speech because of someone's
objections to it, issued a dissenting opinion.
"The Constitution", said the Judge, "does not allow a small
group of passersby to censor, through their complaints, the content of a
peaceful, stationary protest," Beam stated in his dissent. "The First
Amendment knows no heckler's veto, even in an abortion case."