by Allie Martin and Jody Brown
(AgapePress) – Pro-life activists in one Wisconsin city have filed a lawsuit claiming that a parade and assembly ordinance is unconstitutional.
Last November, police in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, threatened to charge Pastor Matt Trewhella and Jim Long with violating the city's newly enacted parade and assembly ordinance, which requires pro-lifers wanting to assemble or protest anywhere in the city to first give 30 days notice. Trewhella and Long were demonstrating with a group of pro-life activists outside a Planned Parenthood office. The two men abandoned their protest and vowed to challenge the law at a later date. They then contacted the Center for Law & Policy, the legal arm of the American Family Association.
“The public cannot allow would-be dictators to stifle free speech and assembly,” Long told the Center. “The truth about Planned Parenthood must be told.” Trewhella says Planned Parenthood is in the “baby-killing business,” and that the city has teamed with the abortion provider “to silence those who proclaim that horrendous truth within city limits.”
Bryan Brown, an attorney with the AFA Law Center, says that as the ordinance stands, families would have to apply for a permit to have a picnic in a public park.
“[According to the ordinance] you need a permit to stand on a sidewalk outside of church and shake hands. You need a permit to walk through the park holding a sign,” Brown says. “But of course it would not be applied against people having a picnic or people gathering outside church to shake hands — it will be applied against the pro-lifers holding a sign. It already has. So we're going to challenge it.”
The attorney says the ordinance is unconstitutional.
“[The ordinance] is rife with constitutional defects, to the point of utter Orwellian absurdity,” he says. “[We believe] the abortion industry in towns like Lake Geneva … is behind ordinances like this, floating them past city council and saying, 'This is how we get rid of the riff-raff in our town.' ”
Veterans organizations, schools, unions, and government agencies are exempt under the ordinance.
AFA founder Dr. Don Wildmon predicted a victory for the pro-life activists in the Lake Geneva case. A similar ordinance was revoked in nearby Elkhorn, Wisconsin, after the Center for Law & Policy filed suit. The Center is representing Trewhella and Long in their lawsuit as well.
(This update courtesy of Agape Press.)
