Free to protest
Published September 27, 2014
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, September 20, 2014.
Moral Monday demonstrators have found themselves with unlikely legal allies: abortion opponents in Massachusetts.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned a Massachusetts law that created a wide buffer area around abortion clinics. The law had prohibited abortion foes from approaching patients on a public sidewalk and urging them to reconsider. This was an infringement on free speech, the ruling written by Chief Justice John Roberts said.
Shift to North Carolina, where hundreds of Moral Monday demonstrators were arrested in the state legislative building last year for protesting the policies of Republican lawmakers.
Some of the demonstrators were convicted in Wake County District Court for trespassing or violating legislative building rules. Some were acquitted, depending on the circumstances of individual cases. Most will not be tried, thanks to Wake County District Attorney Ned Mangum, who began dismissing hundreds of cases Friday.
Mangum responded to last week’s ruling by Wake County Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens, who overturned a 2013 conviction of Durham pastor Leonard Beeghley. Stephens dismissed the case against Beeghley, citing the Supreme Court ruling in finding that the demonstrator was exercising his constitutional rights.
Good for the judge. If citizens have the right to approach a woman on a public sidewalk and peacefully engage her in conversation about a private medical decision, citizens have at least as much of a right to gather in a legislative building and peacefully express their views about the public actions of their elected representatives.
The arrests were a mistake in the first place. If there was a valid reason to remove demonstrators from any part of the legislative building or from the entire building, that could have been accomplished without arrests. The overzealous attitude of legislative police, at least tacitly endorsed by legislative leaders, created unnecessary expense and clogged an already overburdened court docket.
Republican legislators apparently saw Moral Monday demonstrators as hostile lawbreakers who deserved to be arrested. Yet the courts see them in the same light as anti-abortion demonstrators who claim the right to march outside clinics and express their opposition.
The First Amendment protects the rights of free speech and free assembly. Lawmakers can’t honor those rights for groups they like and deny them to groups they don’t like.
People should not push their rights to the point of violating the rights of others. A woman has a right to enter a clinic without being restrained or threatened. A legislator should not be blocked from entering his or her office. But those weren’t the issues in these cases.
The courts must balance free access and free speech. Moral Monday demonstrators were denied their rights. Their arrests should be wiped out.
