If you were hoping the Occupy
Wall Street movement was dead, you'll have to wait a little longer. The ACLU just filed a lawsuit on behalf of occupiers on Ohio. Their complaint? Their free speech rights were infringed upon because they weren't allowed to indefinitely camp in public places. More from
Jason Hart:
The
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio has filed suit against the City of Columbus on behalf of Occupy Columbus, the socialist protesters who squatted on a sidewalk in front of the Ohio Statehouse in late 2011 and removed their frequently-vacant tent when the city tightened permitting rules last summer.
The local Occupy Wall Street group maintains that restricting use of tents and other structures in a public right-of-way infringes on speech and assembly rights protected in the First Amendment as well as in Article I of the Ohio Constitution.
Based on the complaint filed on May 30 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, the Occupy Columbus case rests on the premise that placing a tent, table, or other structure that “is not easily movable” in public space amounts to protected speech.
“One of the defining physical features of the Occupy movement is the presence of its tent,” the complaint explains. “The tent is used to symbolize the ‘occupancy’ of public forums until the imbalance of
powerin political and economic structures has been addressed.”
Apparently stinking up our public places wasn't enough for OWS, now they'll be stinking up our court systems too.
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