USA TODAY International Edition
Activists denounce bills aimed at protests
They say proposals intended to muzzle free expression
In North Dakota, motorists who run into demonstrators on public streets would be exempt from prosecution, even if someone is injured or killed, as long as the motorist did not purposely hit the victim.
In Minnesota, demonstrators who break the law would be liable for the cost of law enforcement.
In Iowa, blocking traffic on a highway would be a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
Civil libertarians and First Amendment scholars said these proposed measures are part of a national trend to stifle public debate and criminalize the constitutional exercise of free speech. They said bills in statehouses from Washington to Virginia seek not only to stifle free speech but also encourage vigilante justice from those who disagree with demonstrators.
Protests have mounted nationally, from women’s marches that clogged streets in cities large and small, to demonstrations at airports around the country over the weekend in response to President Trump’s travel restrictions, to the longrunning oil pipeline protest near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.
“This goes beyond having a chilling effect on free speech, it puts a freeze on it,” said James Harrington, a veteran civil rights attorney in Texas who began joining demonstrations for civil rights and against the Vietnam War in the 1960s.
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Backers of the bills argued the measures are needed to control protests, which can block major roadways and incite violence.
Minnesota state Rep. Nick Zerwas, a Republican from a suburb near Minneapolis, said he was simply trying to help cashstrapped communities that have been badgered by out- of- control protests over the past 18 months. The protests came in response to the police shooting of Philando Castile during a traffic stop in July.
“I think if you’re convicted of a crime where you intentionally inflict as much expense and cost upon a community as possible, you ought to get a bill,” Zerwas said at a committee hearing. “It should not be property taxpayers’ responsibility to cover for your illegal behavior.”
The measure, approved last week by a House committee, drew such a large and loud rebuke from protesters that further work by the panel was halted for the rest of the day. Amid cries of “shame, shame” and “shut it down” from representatives of the Black Lives Matter movement and other activists, committee members left without addressing the remaining legislation up for consideration.
Zerwas, whose bill has the backing of the Minnesota House speaker and awaits a vote before the full House, said critics read more into the legislation than its wording contains. He insisted it posed no threat to anyone’s First Amendment rights. “It wouldn’t limit anyone’s ability to legally protest,” he told the committee. “It wouldn’t limit anyone’s ability to legally petition their government or to demonstrate.”
The bill protecting motorists who might hit demonstrators was filed by North Dakota state Rep. Keith Kempenich, a Republican who has served in the state House since 1993, in response to oil pipeline protests near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.
Kempenich, a rancher, told The Washington Post in January that he filed the bill after his motherin- law’s encounter with protesters who hurled themselves into the path of her car. He was not, he said, seeking to stifle the right to peaceful assembly.
“But there’s a line between protesting and terrorism,” he told the Post. “And what we’re dealing with was terrorism out there.”
An Arizona lawmaker is pushing a measure that would punish organizers of demonstrations that escalate into a riot under state racketeering charges. That would allow authorities to go after the organizers’ financial assets.
“If somebody is funding someone to go out and cause a riot and damage property, they’ve gone beyond their First Amendment right,” said Republican state Sen. Sonny Borrelli, whose bill is scheduled to be heard in committee Thursday.
In Iowa, a state lawmaker filed legislation that would make obstructing traffic on an interstate highway a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. State Sen. Jake Chapman said the bill is in response to protests that followed the election of Donald Trump as president in November.
John Thompson, who said he was a friend of Castile’s, told Minnesota lawmakers that protests were needed to get the attention of policymakers out of touch with the black community. “We have no voice,” Thompson said. “We vote for people like you to make changes. We vote for people like you to give us hope. We vote for people like you to stand up against garbage laws like this.”
Harrington, founder of the Texas Civil Rights Project, said the authors and supporters of such legislation would do well to remember not only their high school civics classes but also their history.
“The exercise of free speech knows no party line,” he said.