The Colorado attorney general wants to “maintain the decorum and dignity of the Lindsey-Flanigan courthouse” in Denver by banning protests and other gatherings on the plaza outside.
We’d rather maintain the First Amendment.
Just who does the state think is dispensing justice at the courthouse in downtown Denver? The U.S. Supreme Court?
Protests are indeed banned on the plaza outside the U.S. high court in Washington, D.C., by a 1949 law that also outlaws the display of signs and banners. It’s an unfortunate statute that was upheld just last month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in tortured logic in which the panel declared the plaza a “nonpublic forum.”
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But why should the Denver courthouse get a First-Amendment-Free Zone? A , city officials have “allowed the Lindsey-Flanigan courthouse plaza to host public gatherings since it was built in 2010.”
And the city of Denver itself is opposed to banning protests.
And yet at a court hearing this week, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Grove told U.S. District Judge William Martinez that the state was seeking a permanent ban on protests at the location.
The request caps a confusing series of events that began in July when police arrested protesters who were then charged with jury tampering for distributing jury nullification literature outside the courthouse. those charges were ill-advised unless the protesters were advocating a specific action for a specific trial.
The protesters sued, got a court order that protected their expressive rights, returned to the plaza and clashed with authorities again because they also erected a canopy, and took their case to court once more.
And somewhere along the line the state decided that protests on the plaza should be banned altogether.
It’s a surprising and dismaying turn of events.
Absent clear evidence of a danger to public safety, U.S. District Judge William Martinez should reject the request.
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