Protesting? Prepare for punishment
Proposals by GOP lawmakers make it harder to speak out
Republican legislators in Oklahoma and Iowa have passed bills granting immunity to drivers whose vehicles strike and injure protesters in public streets.
A Republican proposal in Indiana would bar anyone convicted of unlawful assembly from holding state employment, including elected office. A Minnesota bill would prohibit those convicted of unlawful protesting from receiving student loans, unemployment benefits or housing assistance.
And in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed sweeping legislation this week that toughened existing laws governing public disorder and created a harsh new level of infractions — a bill he’s called “the strongest anti-looting, anti-rioting, pro-law-enforcement piece of legislation in the country.”
The measures are part of a wave of new anti-protest legislation, sponsored and supported by Republicans, in the 11 months since Black Lives Matter protests swept the country following the death of George Floyd. The former Minneapolis police officer who killed Floyd, Derek Chauvin, was convicted Tuesday on murder and manslaughter charges.
But while Democrats seized on Floyd’s death to highlight racism in policing and other forms of social injustice, Republicans responded to a summer of protests by proposing a raft of punitive new measures governing the right to lawfully assemble. GOP lawmakers in 34 states have introduced 81 anti-protest bills during the 2021 legislative session — more than twice as many proposals as
in any other year, according to Elly Page, a senior legal adviser at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, which tracks legislation limiting the right to protest.
Some, like DeSantis, are labeling them “anti-riot” bills, conflating the right to peaceful protest with the rioting and looting that sometimes resulted from such protests.
The laws carry forward the message Republicans have been pushing since last year’s Black Lives Matter protests against racial injustice swept the country: that Democrats are tolerant of violent and criminal actions from those who protest against racial injustice. And the legislation underscores the extent to which support for law enforcement personnel and opposition to protests have become part of the bedrock of GOP orthodoxy and a likely pillar of the platform the party will take
into next year’s midterms.
“This is consistent with the general trend of legislators’ responding to powerful and persuasive protests by seeking to silence them rather than engaging with the message of the protests,” said Vera Eidelman, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union.
Laws exist to punish rioting, and civil rights advocates worry that the new bills violate rights of lawful assembly and free speech protected under the First Amendment. The overwhelming majority of last summer’s nationwide Black Lives Matter protests were peaceful — more than 96% involved no property damage or police injuries, according to The Washington Post, which also found that police officers or counterprotesters often instigated violence.
Florida’s law imposes harsher penalties for existing public disorder crimes,
turning misdemeanor offenses into felonies, creating new felony offenses and preventing defendants from being released on bail until they have appeared before a judge. A survey conducted in January by Ryan Tyson, a Republican pollster, found broad support in the state for harsher penalties against protesters “who damage personal and business property or assault law enforcement.”
But the law goes further. If a local government chooses to decrease its law enforcement budget — to “defund the police,” as DeSantis put it — the measure provides a new mechanism for a prosecutor or a city or county commissioner to appeal the reduction to the state.
The law also increases penalties for taking down monuments, including Confederate ones, making the offense a second-degree felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. It makes
it easier for anyone who injures a protester, such as by driving into a crowd, to escape civil liability.
State Sen. Shevrin Jones, a Democrat from Broward County, noted that DeSantis had been quick to emphasize how necessary the bill was the day after the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol but had made no mention of that event during Monday’s bill signing.
That was evidence, he said, that bills aimed at punishing protesters were disproportionately targeting people of color. “This bill is racist at its core,” Jones said.
So far, three bills aimed at limiting protests have been signed into law — Florida’s and new laws in Arkansas and Kansas that target protesters who seek to disrupt oil pipelines. Others are likely to come soon.
In Oklahoma, Republican lawmakers this month sent legislation to Gov. Kevin Stitt that would criminalize the unlawful blocking of a public street and grant immunity to drivers who strike and injure protesters during a riot. Last June, a pickup truck carrying a horse trailer drove through a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters on a Tulsa freeway, injuring several people and leaving one paralyzed. The driver, who said he had sped up because he feared for the safety of his family, was not charged.
The bill’s author, state Sen. Rob Standridge, said the Tulsa incident had prompted him to seek immunity for drivers who strike protesters. He said Tuesday he wasn’t aware of any drivers who had been charged after striking protesters in Oklahoma. “My hope is that this law never is utilized,” he said in an interview. Carly Atchison, a spokeswoman for Stitt, declined to say whether he would sign the bill, which passed with vetoproof majorities.
Tiffany Crutcher, whose twin brother, Terence Crutcher, was shot and killed in 2016 by a Tulsa police officer who was later acquitted on a manslaughter charge, said the Oklahoma proposal represents Republican efforts to extend the Trump administration’s hostility toward people of color.
Crutcher said she was convinced that if Stitt signed the legislation, it would be applied in harsher terms against those protesting racial injustice than for white protesters demonstrating for gun rights or against abortion.
“We all know that over the last four years that we saw white supremacy, bigotry and racism show its ugly head in so many forms,” said Crutcher, who quit her job as an orthopedist to work for racial justice after the death of her brother. “This is the continuation of the Trump administration that showed us every day that Black lives didn’t matter.”