Chicago Indymedia : http://chicago.indymedia.org/archive
Chicago Indymedia

LOCAL News :: Civil & Human Rights

City's Disorderly Conduct Ordinance Faces Constitutional Challenge -- LATE UPDATE: HEARING HAS BEEN POSTPONED

ATTENTION: REGARDING THE POST BELOW, AT 3 PM TODAY (11/8) WE LEARNED FROM THE CITY'S ATTORNEYS THAT THE HEARING ORGINALLY SCHEDULED FOR TOMORROW HAS BEEN POSTPONED. WE WILL POST ANOTHER ARTICLE AS SOON AS WE KNOW THE NEW DATE.

CHICAGO – Attorneys for the Chicago Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) will challenge the constitutionality of Chicago's disorderly conduct ordinance in a Cook County Circuit Court hearing at 9 am, Wednesday, November 9 in Mark J. Ballard's courtroom in the new courthouse located at 555 W. Harrison Street, Chicago (between Clinton & Jefferson).
Mecklenberg pic.jpg
City's Disorderly Conduct Ordinance Faces Constitutional Challenge
NLG attorneys Charles Nissim-Sabat and Jeff Frank charge that the City's disorderly conduct ordinance suffers from most of the same defects as its old gang loitering ordinance, which was struck down on constitutional grounds in 1995 by both the Illinois and the U.S. Supreme Courts after the Chicago Police used it to illegally arrest over 42,000 people over a three year period.

Like the gang loitering ordinance before it, the City's Disorderly Conduct Ordinance describes alleged violations in such loose language that it gives officers the license to arbitrarily arrest people. who have done nothing wrong. Portions of the language in the current ordinance were lifted almost verbatim from previous ordinances found unconstitutional in Chicago and other jurisdictions, such as prohibitions against causing annoyance or alarm. Sections of the Ordinance barring picketing outside of schools and religious institutions have also been found to be unconstitutional but they are still on the books and the City still uses them to infringe freedom of speech.

The ordinance allows the police to order innocent individuals to disperse because OTHER INDIVIDUALS are committing acts "likely to cause substantial harm or serious inconvenience, annoyance or alarm." While acts "likely to cause substantial harm" could be prosecuted under laws governing property damage or injuries to persons, courts have repeatedly ruled on 1st Amendment grounds that municipalities cannot prohibit acts likely to cause "serious inconvenience, annoyance or alarm," as these could amount to a "heckler's veto" prohibiting expression of opinions which may be unpopular in some quarters. Innocent individuals who refuse to disperse can be arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. The City has not cited any precedent for such broad criminal prosecution of individuals who have done nothing wrong. The Ordinance does not require that those who committed the acts that triggered the order to disperse be charged with anything.

The current cases challenging the City's ordinance arose out of non-violent protests against the war on Iraq on March 19th of this year, the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of that country. Bradford Lyttle, a long time pacifist activist, and Andy Thayer, an anti-war and gay rights activist, were each charged with disorderly conduct. Lyttle and Pat Vogel, the mother of a son who was sent to Iraq and stationed in Mozul, were arrested while holding signs on a sidewalk along Michigan Avenue (Vogel's charge is being tried in a separate trial). Thayer was arrested while speaking at a press conference nearby, and was also charged with resisting arrest and violation of the City's permit ordinance. Those who committed the alleged acts that triggered the order to disperse were not charged with anything.

"Going back to the time of the current Mayor's father and the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the Democratic Machine in this town has a long history of hiding behind local ordinances in its attempts to squelch or sideline opinions it does not approve of," said Thayer. "Given Mayor Daley's support of the unpopular Iraq war, it's a sad statement on how much Chicago still needs to change as we see him follow in his father's footsteps with unconstitutional violations of the 1st Amendment. Defeat of this ordinance would be an important step towards restoring some of the liberties lost after 9/11."

PHOTO CAPTION: Sheri Mecklenburg, Chief Counsel to the Chicago Police Department (center).

# # #
 
 

Donate

Views

Account Login

Media Centers

 

This site made manifest by dadaIMC software