The judge in a federal lawsuit challenging Miami’s ordinance governing public demonstrations has suspended portions of the law pending resolution of the suit.

U.S. District Judge Donald Graham on Friday ordered city officials to grant demonstration permits to all political protesters on two days’ notice and without the previously required liability insurance. The city had refused to suspend the contested portions of the code for anyone other than the initial plaintiff in the suit.

That plaintiff, Lake Worth for Global Justice Inc., an activist group based in Lake Worth, had filed suit against the city seeking to void the city’s permit scheme almost entirely. It has since been joined by two other plaintiffs. Both the city and the plaintiffs claimed Graham’s ruling as a victory.

Judge Graham’s ruling was a clarification of his order earlier in the case that approved an agreement between the city and the Lake Worth group to suspend portions of the code. That order, Graham wrote Friday, “extends to every individual or organization that desires to engage in lawful expressive activities.”

Graham’s ruling robs the city of “weapons to control which groups are able to express themselves regarding important political issues,” said plaintiffs’ co-counsel Robert Ross of Boca Raton. “All the city’s discretion is gone. [The permit process] is now on a ‘shall-issue’ basis.”

But Assistant City Attorney Warren Bittner said the city already had stated that the insurance requirements don’t apply to First Amendment-type activities. As for the two-day limit, he said, “This clarifies that that applies to all who apply for permits. The plaintiffs aimed to render permits unnecessary, while the judge’s order requires them.”

The plaintiffs had refused to apply for permits for demonstrations at Monday’s public hearing held by the city’s Civilian Investigative Panel and at a planned protest rally on March 20, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The Civilian Investigative Panel is probing allegations of police misconduct during demonstrations against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas hemispheric trade agreement last November.

The lawsuit challenging the city’s so-called parade ordinance was filed on Feb. 4 by the Lake Worth group. It also filed a request for a temporary restraining order barring enforcement of the challenged provisions of the code — those that fail to give the city a limited time in which to respond to permit applications and those that appear to impose assumption of liability and insurance requirements on protesters.

The plaintiffs are represented by Gainesville legal collective Southern Legal Counsel Inc. and Santa Monica, Calif.-based civil liberties attorney Carol Sobel, along with Ross.

At an emergency hearing on Feb 5, the city responded by waiving those provisions and asking for 30 days to draft a response, including proposals for revisions of the code. At Judge Graham’s direction, the two sides drafted a consent order, which the judge then approved.

But the order only addressed the issuance of permits to the Lake Worth group. When the group’s attorneys asked the city to suspend those portions of the code for other groups and individuals, the city refused.

On Feb. 20, the protesters’ attorneys asked Graham to enjoin the city from enforcing the sections of the code. In their motion for preliminary injunction the attorneys cited “the patent unconstitutionality” of the code, the city’s contention that the challenged provisions were not meant to apply to First Amendment activity, and the city’s expressed intent to amend the code.

The city’s response cited public safety concerns, arguing that to grant the injunction “would leave the city with no permit system in place for “large demonstrations [and] parades … which are almost a weekly occurrence.”

“The police need to prearrange such events,” Bittner wrote, “especially when they [sic] are pro and con demonstrators, which is often the case.”

In his order Friday, Graham also required that the city explain to him any future denial of permit applications.

In a footnote, Graham wrote that he “had no reason to conclude that the city would want to relieve some citizens of the provisions of the permit scheme while denying the same relief to others.”

The city is “OK with the judge’s order,” Bittner said. “The judge has extended the previous order. But he also clarified that everyone has to apply [for a permit].”

Andrea Costello, an attorney with Southern Legal Counsel, disagreed. “The whole point is that people have the right to protest without a permit,” she said. “The permit scheme is unconstitutional.”

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