'F*** Biden' signs ignite legal war over government crackdown
(Photo by Joe Kovacs)
An organization that focuses on constitutional rights for Americans is in court in Florida to hold governmental officials accountable for violating the rights of city residents by censoring their speech.
The dispute is not over the censorship, which already has been declared illegal, but over the fact a court has let those government officials skip any liability.
Speech is, of course, one of the fundamental rights in America. And the American Bar notes that whether it's offensive or not should not be factor.
"This neutrality principle borrows from a stirring maxim often attributed to Voltaire: 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,'" that group said.
The organization noted, "Great stuff, but it illustrates how much of what we think we know about free expression is incomplete. Voltaire didn’t even write the saying—it was written about Voltaire’s beliefs by biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall (writing under the pseudonym S.G. Tallentyre). Its confused origins aside, this poetic pledge provides no guidance about how to defend what some would call the indefensible."
The case at hand involves some offensive signs, including "F*** Biden," that were posted, in violation of a city sign ordinance, in Punta Gorda, Florida.
A state court found government officials acted unconstitutionally by fining two protesters with the signs $3,000.
But the court refused to make the government financially liable for violating the protesters’ First Amendment right to political expression.
The Rutherford Institute now, with the case on appeal to the the state's Sixth District Court of Appeal, warn that shielding the government from accountability for its wrongful actions will only "encourage government entities to believe they can freely violate the constitutional rights of its citizens without having to pay a penny or suffer any consequences."
"The right of political free speech is the basis of all liberty. No matter what their political persuasion might be, every American has a First Amendment right to protest government programs or policies with which they might disagree," said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. "As the Supreme Court recognized, laws of this sort empower the government to suppress unpopular ideas or information and manipulate the public debate through coercion, which is exactly the kind of tyranny the First Amendment was intended to prohibit"
Punta Gorda had changed its sign rules to ban anything containing "indecent speech." Shortly after Andrew Sheets was cited four times by police for violating the ordinance due to displaying his signs.
Likewise, Richard Massey was cited for violating the ordinance by displaying a sign which had a similar complaint.
Rutherford obtained a First Amendment victory when a lower court ruled against the city and said the ordinance was "designed to cause the preemptive self-silencing of speakers whose messages are entitled to constitutional protection."
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But the court refused to order the city to reimburse the more than $2,000 in costs for filing fees and such.
Now Rutherford is warning that making protesters pay substantial fees to protect their speech rights "could create a significant chilling effect, causing others to silence themselves or just pay the unconstitutional fines for exercising their freedom of speech against the government."
IMPORTANT NOTE: “Election denier!” “Science denier!” “Climate-change denier!” “Conspiracy theorist!” And then there’s “hate speech,” “fake news,” “disinformation,” “misinformation,” even something called “MALinformation.” A bizarre new lexicon has been conjured up by America’s elites, the SOLE PURPOSE of which is to discredit and ridicule – and if at all possible, CENSOR ENTIRELY – speech that doesn’t support their increasingly dark and deranged agenda. Tucker Carlson is just the latest.
In the greatest imaginable irony, the nation once boasting the most robust culture of freedom of speech and the press – undergirded by the strongest constitutional protections for those rights – is now ground zero for a total war on free expression.
How could this possibly happen in the United States of America? It’s all explained as never before in the sensational new issue of WND’s critically acclaimed WHISTLEBLOWER magazine, titled “THE ELITES’ ALL-OUT WAR ON FREE SPEECH.” WHISTLEBLOWER is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.
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