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View Poll Results: Current trends regarding Free Speech Rights
Dangerous precedents are being set restricting the right to free speech
11
57.89%
Chicken Little - this is a non-issue
5
26.32%
I am OK with the restriction of free speech pertaining to specific areas
A judge who declared all public areas of Los Angeles County courthouses "no speech zones" has been hit with a federal civil rights lawsuit.
According to the complaint filed Thursday, a general order issued Sept. 13 by California Superior Court Judge William MacLaughlin "prohibits such free speech activities as picketing, distribution of literature, and demonstration."
"The courts are supposed to be protecting our First Amendment rights, not suppressing them," said Mike Johnson, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. "This judge's order is a constitutional travesty and has already forced our clients and other law-abiding citizens from engaging in classic, ordinary free speech."
The complaint says the ban "requires even an individual prospective speaker to get a permit but fails to provide any objective criteria or time restrictions governing the granting of a permit."
Alliance Defense Fund attorneys represent best-selling author and TV co-host Ray Comfort and Pastor Emeal Zwayne.
ADF says the two Christian ministers have been peacefully sharing their faith most mornings for the last two and a half years outside the Los Angeles County courthouse in Bellflower.
For 20 minutes each morning, Comfort and Zwayne talk with people waiting outside before the courthouse opens for the day.
They have never caused any disturbance for the court or for uninterested persons, ADF insists.
Because of the court's "no speech zone" order, police officers removed the two men from a walkway outside of the courthouse Sept. 30 and told them not to return.
"Our clients have been peaceably speaking on the courthouse steps for years," said Johnson. "Now a judge has proclaimed a sudden and sweeping crackdown on free speech. A courthouse is the last place you'd expect to find a restriction on an American's First Amendment rights."
Johnson said he expects the federal court will "see the obvious problems with Judge MacLaughlin's order and declare it unconstitutional."
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__________________
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
-Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Where does the free speech rights of a street preacher end and my rights to go about my business start.
There was [or at least were] a family [I think] that would preach on the street in Mill Ave. IIRC, they would have their children stand on boxes an d scream at folks passing by, various hell and damnation etc, etc, etc.
To my mind this crosses the boundary. Sure you have a right to say andbelieve what you will. You don't have a right to intrude on my privacy. IMO there comes a point where this is so intrusive it imapcts me and my rights should take over ?
I don't know if ASU still has them...but in the early 90's there was quite a few of them...I just ignored them and went my business.
When I lived in NYC - there was quite a few groups that would set up on corners to voice their opinions regarding religion, race, etc...again I ignored them and went about my business.
Now if a group starts mouthing off about commiting jihad against someone...that will give me a moment of pause to consider calling the authorites or getting rowdy.
No, these folks wern't preaching jihad or anything and I did exactly the same. Ignored them and went about my business. IMO they were a few short of a 6 pack but then I'm entiteled to my opinion as well.
Imagine however, you own coffee shop on that corner and want to have some nice outside tables.
These guys come along and preaching, some might say screaming at passers-by 2ft way from your tables. That is surely going to affect your business, do they have the right to do that ?
The point here is that you and I can just move on, what about people who can't move on ? Or why should I have to move on just to not have my privacy invaded, I should be able to stand on a public street corner without being screamed at.
If I chose to stand there and scream at folks the nice young men in cops cars would come and drag me away for disturping the peace [or soemthing]. Do these folks get a free pass becase the are screaming religion ?
note: This is not talking about the guys in LA as I know nothing about the case.
...If I chose to stand there and scream at folks the nice young men in cops cars would come and drag me away for disturping the peace [or soemthing]. Do these folks get a free pass becase the are screaming religion ?
Nope no free pass - I would call the authorities to complain about the disruption to my business and then bribe the cops to have the screaming preachers get tossed in yer cell.
Let me first say that I believe that people who stand on "soap-boxes" on the street corner are wasting their time and are an annoyance to all others in the area.
But it is their right to do so. However the question posed at the top of the thread goes far beyond street corner preachers. Consider the following:
Quote:
In the Zone At West Virginia University you can say anything you want--as long as you're standing in the Free-Speech Zone. by Jonathan V. Last 03/25/2002 12:00:00 AM Jonathan V. Last, online editor
THE FIRST AMENDMENT is alive and well at West Virginia University. Or rather, it's alive and well in two small, outdoor areas of the WVU campus that the administration has cheerfully set aside as free-speech zones. As long as students are within these zones--which are available on a first-come, first-come, first-served basis--they can say whatever they want, pass out flyers, and even post unpopular signs. The two free-speech zones are located near the student center, the Mountainlair, and are described by members of the university as being "roughly the size of a classroom."
Professor Robert Griffith, who chairs a faculty senate commission that is reassessing the zones, estimates that about 50 people could fit in one zone while a little more than 100 could fit in the other. WVU has 22,000 undergraduates. No one is quite certain where the free-speech zones came from. Griffith doesn't know when they were established, but, he says, "some of the older faculty claim that they've been here since the Vietnam days." Becky Losted, director of News and Information Services at WVU, thinks they go back even further. "It's my understanding that they were established prior to the Vietnam war." The website for the WVU Free Speech Consortium suggests that they may have appeared after a demonstration following the Kent State shootings in May 1970.
But not only does no one on campus know when the zones were established--no one knows how they were established. There is no formal policy set forth by any administrative office. There is no legislative paper trail. The entire free-speech zone policy comes from a three-paragraph section of the student handbook, "The Mountie." Which makes it the perfect Orwellian law: It's ubiquitous and enforceable and no one is accountable for it.
And the zones are actively enforced. In October 1999, a Christian preacher was banished from Gay Pride Week for dissenting outside the zone. In March 2000, College Republicans were kept from passing out flyers in the student union during the school's Festival of Ideas. In November 2001, a student was removed from a Disney recruitment seminar after passing out anti-Disney pamphlets in the lobby beforehand. The university police cited his breach of the free-speech zone as the grounds for their intervention. For the last two years a heterodox assortment of campus activists--including everyone from faculty members to the Students for Economic Justice to the College Republicans to the West Virginia Animal Rights Coalition--has been trying to get rid of the zones, yet they've been met with surprising resistance.
Surprising, because, well, who's against free speech? The answer, it turns out, is university president David Hardesty. After months of having their letters ignored, the free-speech advocates finally got Hardesty's attention when the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education got involved this past winter. (In fairness to Hardesty, there are a handful of others on campus who support the zones. In 1991 the student board of governors voted against a symbolic measure to support free speech on campus. Explaining his "no" vote, governor Billy Coates, said, "I feel that we don't really know what would happen if we opened the campus up to free speech all around.")
On February 11, Greg Lukianoff, FIRE's director of Legal and Public Advocacy, sent a letter to Hardesty requesting that WVU abandon the zones and adopt the First Amendment as the campus free-speech policy. Lukianoff argued that while "reasonable time, place and manner" restrictions were understandable, "we assure you that there is nothing 'reasonable' about transforming ninety-nine percent of your University's property--indeed public property--into 'Censorship Zones.'" Lukianoff cited legal precedents for allowing free speech everywhere in the university and also touched on another important problem with the zones: By restricting speech to prescribed areas, they prevent it from being directed at its target, pace the Fourth Circuit's ruling in Students Against Apartheid Coalition v. Virginia.
Hardesty, a Rhodes Scholar and graduate of Harvard Law School, reportedly dismissed FIRE's arguments as "legal mumbo-jumbo." The next day, February 12, Hardesty met with members of Students for Economic Justice and announced that he intended to "liberalize" the zone policy. Why the sudden about-face? On the same day, WVU associate general counsel Beverly Kerr may have tipped the administration's hand. Appearing on West Virginia public radio, Kerr was asked about the constitutionality of the free-speech zones. "I really am going to decline to respond to that at this point. Certainly this is not an issue that needs to be in the press . . ." So now that it is in the press, Hardesty seems to be backing away from the zones. In early April, the faculty senate commission will issue a recommendation to Hardesty. Griffith, who chairs the commission, says he would like to see the zones "done away with altogether." Then it will fall to the president to make a unilateral decision.
Jettisoning the zones entirely seems unlikely. As one student told the campus paper, the Daily Athenaeum, "I'd like to be optimistic about what he says, but we have been waiting a long time. The Hardesty administration has shown its willingness to ignore this issue." But who knows. Maybe President Hardesty will grant his charges First Amendment rights if he gets enough bad press. Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.
__________________
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
-Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Agree with RC, this is trivial [but wrong] compared to what our government is doing right now in many areas.
RC voted dangerous, not trivial.
What could be more significant than the restriction of our ability to speak freely?? If you can control the processing of ideas, you control everything!
__________________
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
-Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Last edited by CardLogic; October 17th, 2005 at 11:40 AM.
What could be more significant than the restriction of our ability to speak freely?? It you can control the processing of ideas, you control everything!
Give me prime examples where people dont have the ability to speak feely in this country? Outside of that lame azz judges case that will be overturned.
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“They said the road comes through Seattle. We came through here and took care of business.” Anquan Boldin
Give me prime examples where people dont have the ability to speak feely in this country? Outside of that lame azz judges case that will be overturned.
The restriction of protesters at the DNC and RNC during the past Presidential election to "free-speech zones"!!!
How can it be considered a right to freedom of speech and assembly if there are restrictions placed upon the ability do so??
__________________
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
-Samuel Langhorne Clemens
The restriction of protesters at the DNC and RNC during the past Presidential election to "free-speech zones"!!!
How can it be considered a right to freedom of speech and assembly if there are restrictions placed upon the ability do so??
Can you be more specific? Im not sure exactly what you are talking about, what specific restrictions? Protestors dont have free reign and never have in the history of this country.
__________________
“They said the road comes through Seattle. We came through here and took care of business.” Anquan Boldin
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