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U.S. District Judge Donald Graham
granted the request during an emergency hearing in a lawsuit filed by an
activist group that protested last year’s FTAA talks. The group, Lake
Worth for Global Justice, is challenging the procedures as
unconstitutional.
The city “would like sufficient time
to review and analyze plaintiff’s issues, determine if amendments to the
challenged provisions are in order, and review any proposed amendments
with the plaintiff — all with the hope of resolving this lawsuit without
further judicial intervention,” Assistant City Attorney Warren Bittner
wrote in his motion.
The protest group’s attorney, Carol Sobel, called the city’s motion “a clear-cut victory” for her group.
City ordinances governing protest
activity drew public attention last fall when revisions proposed by city
Police Chief John Timoney were passed into law by a nervous City
Commission anticipating the arrival of thousands of violent protesters
for the Free Trade Area of the Americas conference in mid-November.
Timoney’s first set of revisions was withdrawn in the face of criticism that they were overly broad.
A second version — restricting
protesters from carrying a wide range of items that police said could be
used as weapons, and which commissioners were assured would pass
constitutional muster — was approved by a 4-0 vote on Nov. 14.
But the Lake Worth group’s lawsuit targets portions of Miami’s protest code that long predate the FTAA conference.
“The city’s [permit] ordinances were
drawn up before a number of Supreme Court decisions beginning in the
late ’60s,” Sobel said. “Miami has one of the worst permitting processes
I’ve seen, full of circular reasoning.”
Sobel’s client’s chief objection is
to the code’s sections 54-3 through 54-6, which govern the issuance of
parade permits. The plaintiff alleges that the code fails to specify how
much advance time is required in which to file permit applications.
And they allege that the code’s requirement that applicants assume
civil liability for lawsuits arising from demonstrations is “onerous”
and constitutes “impermissible prior restraint.”
The code requires that applicants
take legal responsibility for “any acts arising or resulting” from their
protests, including “any omissions or commissions on the part of the
city.”
Sobel argues that the requirement is
in direct violation of a 1982 Supreme Court ruling in NAACP v. Claiborne
Hardware. “The court held there could be no tort liability for protected First Amendment activity,” she said.
On Thursday, city attorneys also
authorized a demonstration permit for the group to allow it to protest
outside that evening’s Civilian Investigative Panel hearing at Miami
City Hall — even though the group had deliberately refused to apply for a permit.
The suit filed Wednesday alleges that
the city’s permit scheme is so broad, vague and arbitrary that it
constitutes “unlawful prior restraint,” and “vests public officials with
unbridled discretion” and “invites content-based decisions” on who is
permitted to demonstrate.
The suit — based on a federal law
that dates to the Reconstruction era and allows claims for deprivation
on civil rights — asks the court for a temporary restraining order
followed by a permanent injunction against enforcement of the permit
ordinances.
City attorneys asserted in court
Thursday that the issuance of a permit nullified the activists’ request
for the temporary restraining order, since they could no longer claim
injury.
The city also unilaterally suspended
the permit code’s requirement that demonstrators assume liability for
torts arising from protest activity. That requirement is a major focus
of the protesters’ lawsuit.
The city asked the court for a 30-day
extension to reply to the suit. “Plaintiff raises some interesting
issues” regarding the constitutionality of the code, Assistant City
Attorney Bittner wrote in his brief. “They should be seriously evaluated
before embarking on full-scale litigation.” Graham granted the 30-day
extension.
Lake Worth for Global Justice Inc. is
an activist collective whose oversized puppets were a prominent feature
of the FTAA protests in Miami. It is represented by Robert W. Ross, a
Lake Worth solo practitioner, Southern Legal Counsel Inc., a Gainesville
legal collective, and Sobel, a Santa Monica, Calif., civil liberties
attorney.
The plaintiff’s attorneys are
affiliated with the National Lawyers Guild, an organization dedicated to
the defense of leftwing political goals. Sobel co-chairs the group’s
mass defense committee, which does protest-related litigation.
Defendants in the suit are the city of Miami, Timoney, City Manager Joe Arriola and Fire Chief William Bryson.
Miami City Attorney Alejandro Vilarello was unavailable for comment.
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