Posted on 11/08/2004 12:55:06 PM PST by SmithL
HELENA, Mont. -- The federal government did not violate the rights of a Rainbow Family member when it singled him and two others out for participating in an annual, illegal gathering on U.S. Forest Service land in 2000, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
The three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Barry Adams' argument that he was selectively prosecuted and his contention that the regulations prohibiting such a gathering are unconstitutional.
Adams and two other Rainbow Family members were cited by the Forest Service for failing to obtain a permit for a gathering that brought an estimated 23,000 members of the counterculture group to Montana's Big Hole Valley in 2000. All three were convicted.
Adams appealed, arguing that the Forest Service regulation requiring a special group-use permit for a gathering of more than 75 people on Forest Service land violates a constitutional right to public assembly. The appellate judges disagreed.
The judges also rejected Adams' argument that he should not have personally been prosecuted for the actions of a group, and that by prosecuting only three of the thousands of participants, the government had resorted to illegal, selective prosecution.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
The Rainbows trash every place they meet. Aren't they supposed to be environmentally sensitive??
Hang 'em High ~ Bump!
What the hell is Rainbow family and why does the left co-opt the rainbow and ruin it for everyone else?
If that's Swahili for stoned then yes.
LMAO!
Thank God we have conservatives as conservation officers.
23,000 dope smoking zero's would have caused alot of damage.
Thewy need to have guns, in order to herd the DUmmies back into their urban getto's which are a shining example of the loony left's conservation efforts.
Note to lefties: clean up your own filthy 'hood' and leave nature alone. It has done fine without you thus far.
They're basically a group who believe Woodstock never ended.
I ran into them in Teton National Forest just northeast of Jackson. They run in rainbow-painted school buses and VW minivans and go off the beaten path to squat as long as they can. They don't stay in the campgrounds but find some spot way off in the boonies to live their 60's hippie lifestyles. I think they're pretty harmless.
Except to the environment and downstreamers...
Some of them squatted on BLM land about a half mile upstream from our former Oregon place, itself 'already in the boonies' a few years ago. They left behind clothes, garbage, open-pit latrines, and a cache of supplies for a return visit That winter, the remains of one of their tents and some other stuff they had 'disposed of' was washed downstream onto our property.
They were also using open cooking fires during fire season, smoking in the woods, etc, all with total disregard for public safety, public health, or surrounding private property, some of which, of the more portable kind 'mysteriously' disappeared.
They kept a low profile, so we just thought there were the usual, though scruffier, hikers using the area. It wasn't until deer season opened that I found their recently abandoned site, at the end of a 'closed' logging spur road.
May not have been part of this group, but certainly related.
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