Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
Posted on 04/07/2006 6:19:35 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
NEW YORK A preacher found relief from a higher authority today when an appeals court ruled that Ithaca selectively used its noise ordinance to silence him in violation of his rights to free speech, equal protection and freedom of religion.
The 2nd U-S Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ordered a federal judge in Albany to declare victory for Kevin Deegan -- saying it found the noise ordinance "cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny."
Deegan had sued Ithaca, its attorney and its chief of police in a bid to strike down the ordinance in the college town 45 miles south of Syracuse.
The ordinance prohibits speech that can be heard 25 feet away. It led the West Seneca resident to stop preaching on October 9th, 1999, after a police officer threatened to arrest him following a complaint by a local business employee.
The appeals court noted that Deegan said he had heard a singing group 200 feet away and people talking more than 25 feet from him but they were left undisturbed.
http://www.theithacajournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060407/NEWS01/604070348/1002
City of Evil ping!
I guess open air concerts are out of the question....
baning=banning
If he'd been waving Mao's little red book instead of a bible....
ping
Or the Koran:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/98/4.2.98/Islam.html
A distance of twenty-five feet is not an unreasonable projection of speech.
Thousands - thousands - of years ago, there used to be these creatures/waifs on the sidewalks who had the audacity to shout out, "Read all about it!!!" in selling their newspapers in Ithaca and all other cities.
Charley Chaplin or Harold Lloyd might have set up a comedy situation with these two - the paper hawker and the preacher - eyeing each other warily and trying to figure out how to surreptitiously remove each other from the site.
All that presuposes a sense of humor - that of a thousand years ago.
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
Constitutional rights?
What are those?
Finally a judge figured it out.
cool visual. like steve martin and kevin bacon in the beginning of planes, trains, and automobiles.
"If he'd been waving Mao's little red book instead of a bible...."
... he'd be on the city council by now!
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