Government bureaucrats think they get to decide which political messages deserve protection and which deserve punishment.
That is exactly what happened in Washington, D.C., during the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter (BLM) fiasco in the summer of 2020.
Leftists in government embraced BLM rioters. D.C. officials even allowed the so-called activists to paint giant political messages on public streets. Mayor Muriel Bowser personally commissioned the permanent yellow “Black Lives Matter” mural on 16th Street and was present when protestors added the words “Defund the Police.”
Pro-lifers, who are activists for protecting life in the womb, wanted to do the same. Members of the Frederick Douglass Foundation and Students for Life of America applied for a permit to paint “Black Preborn Lives Matter” outside a Planned Parenthood facility. They agreed to use temporary paint at the police department’s request.
But when they arrived, officers warned them they would be arrested if they painted the message.
Arrested? Did they arrest BLM members for doing the same? The pro-lifers offered a compromise: they’d use chalk instead. The answer was still no. They wrote the message in chalk anyway. The police arrested them for defacing property.
That is not equal treatment under the law.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the pro-life groups’ legal counsel, filed a lawsuit against the city. They lost in the lower court, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld their First Amendment rights and reversed that decision in 2023. The court remanded the case to the lower court.
The D.C Circuit reaffirmed that the government can’t selectively enforce the law based on whether officials approve of the speaker’s viewpoint.
The late Dean Nelson, who was chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, welcomed the ruling. He noted that, unlike many demonstrations that resulted in damaged property during the summer of 2020, the pro-life advocates caused no damage at all. Their offense expressing an unpopular viewpoint, not vandalism.
ADF announced last Thursday that, despite the appeal court’s reasoning, the the lower court ruled against the pro-lifers again. ADF’s clients are going back to the D.C. Circuit.
“The government has no business deciding which political viewpoints get a free pass and which get handcuffs,” said Troy Rolling, chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation. “Equal justice means applying the law equally, not rewarding favored speech while punishing dissenting voices. If the First Amendment means anything, it means government cannot silence Americans because it disagrees with what they have to say.”
