The full panel of judges on the 6th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the Constitution doesn’t allow
police officers to eject Christians from a public area just because Muslims are
threatening violence.
The decision came in the
long-running “heckler’s veto” case that erupted at the International Arab
Festival in Dearborn, Michigan, in 2012, when Christian evangelists were
violently attacked by a hostile Muslim mob.
Lower courts ruled the officers were
allowed to order the Christians to leave, under threat of arrest, because
of the threat of violence from the Muslims.
However, the full
appeals court the police action in violation of the Constitution. “We find that defendants violated the Bible Believers’
First Amendment rights because there can be no legitimate dispute based on this
record that the [county and officers] effectuated a heckler’s veto by cutting
off the Bible Believers’ protected speech in response to a hostile crowd’s
reaction,” the court opinion said.
“The First Amendment offers sweeping
protection that allows all manner of speech to enter the marketplace of ideas.
This protection applies to loathsome and unpopular speech with the same force
as it does to speech that is celebrated and widely accepted. The protection
would be unnecessary if it only served to safeguard the majority views. In
fact, it is the minority view, including expressive behavior that is deemed
distasteful and highly offensive to the vast majority of people that most often
needs protection under the First Amendment.”
The case was brought by Bible
Believers, Ruben Israel, Arthur Fisher and Joshua DeLosSantos against Wayne
County, Michigan, Sheriff Benny Napoleon and deputies Dennis Richardson and
Mike Jaafar. It cited the plaintiffs’ messages on signs and T-shirts that
included “Islam Is A Religion of Blood and Murder,” “Turn or Burn,” “Fear God,”
“Jesus Is the Way, the Truth and the Life. All Others are Thieves and Robbers”
and “Prepare to Meet Thy God – Amos 4:12.”
The Christians also began their walk
carrying a pole with a pig’s head attached to the top, further angering the
Muslim crowd.
The opinion noted that two types of
speech are unprotected, incitement to riot and fighting words. The judges found
any advocacy for the use of force or lawless behavior is “absent from the
record in this case.” And the judges found regarding fighting words, “the
average individual attending the festival did not react with violence, and of
the group made up of mostly adolescents, only a certain percentage engaged in
bottle throwing.”
The opinion cited the “heckler’s
veto” concept of one person or group silencing others by threatening violence. “It
is a fundamental precept of the First Amendment that the government cannot
favor the rights of one private speaker over those of another. Accordingly,
content-based restrictions on constitutionally protected speech are anathema to
the First Amendment and are deemed ‘presumptively invalid,’” the ruling said. “An
especially ‘egregious’ form of content-based discrimination is that which is
designed to exclude a particular point of view from the marketplace of ideas. …
Punishing, removing, or by other means silencing a speaker due to crowd
hostility will seldom, if ever, constitute the least restrictive mans available
to serve a legitimate government purpose,” it said.
“A review of Supreme Court precedent
firmly establishes that the First Amendment does not countenance a heckler’s
veto,” the ruling said. The county argued that the Christians needed to be
removed because of the crowd and the threat. But, the ruling notes, “The video
record evinces next to no attempt made by the officers to protect the Bible
Believers or prevent the lawless actions of the audience.”
The judges also pointed out that
there were many officers “unoccupied” if there had been a need for them. The
Christians came to talk about their beliefs, the ruling noted, but when that
message was not well received, “police did next to nothing to … contain the
lawlessness of the hecklers in the crowd.”
“Instead, the WCSO accused the Bible
Believers of being disorderly and removed them,” the ruling said, “Wayne County
… through its deputy chiefs and corporation counsel, effectuated a
constitutionally impermissible heckler’s veto by allowing an angry mob of
riotous adolescents to dictate what religious beliefs and opinions could and
could not be expressed. This, the Constitution simply does not allow.” The case was ordered back to the
lower court to calculate damages.
The
American Freedom Law Center,
which worked on the case, said the court also found the officers were not
immune from legal action. AFLC co-founder and Senior Counsel Robert J. Muise
said: “This was a complete victory for the Constitution and for all
freedom-loving Americans who enjoy the protections of the First Amendment. This
decision makes clear that the First Amendment protects speech critical of Islam
and that when the government seeks to suppress such speech by enforcing a
heckler’s veto that favors the violent Muslim mob over the free speech rights
of Christians, the government will pay dearly for this egregious violation of
the Constitution.”
AFLC co-founder and Senior Counsel
David Yerushalmi added: “Kudos to Judge Clay and the majority. Judge Rogers’s
dissenting opinion, on the other hand, speaks volumes about how progressives
(be they Republicans or Democrats) view the Bill of Rights. For Judge Rogers,
there is one constitution for minorities and quite a lesser document for those
perceived to be in the majority. The former’s speech is protected; the latter’s
is protected only up to the point that some minority – especially Muslims –
protests or, as in this case, engages in violence by attacking the speaker. In
this case, the Christians and the Constitution did not lie down and roll over.
This is an example where lawfare, fought on behalf of liberty, has moved the
proverbial mountain and buried the jihadi’s heckler’s veto six feet under.”
The
lawsuit alleged the Christians were pelted
with water bottles and rocks by Muslims, and police threatened to arrest the
Christians for disorderly conduct if they did not halt their speech activity
and immediately leave the festival area.
A video of the 2012 confrontation
shows the Muslim mob assaulting the Christians and the authorities refusal to
protect them. Not one Muslim was arrested for the
attack, which left several members of the Christian group injured, the video
said. The video, and a related complaint, showed the crowd – reminiscent of a
rock-throwing “intifada” scene from the Middle East – hurling a dizzying
barrage of objects at the Christians, who were standing passively with their
signs.
(Warning:
The following 22-minute video contains profane statements shouted by an
angry mob and may be offensive to viewers.)
http://www.wnd.com/2015/10/judges-cops-cant-boot-christians-because-muslims-violent/
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