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, Friday, February 3 in Mark J. Ballard's courtroom in the new courthouse located at 555 W. Harrison Street, Room 304, Chicago (1/2 block south of the "Clinton" stop on the Blue Line "el").

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 last 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 was found innocent in a jury trial in December). 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 city's Democratic Machine has a long history of using petty local ordinances to squelch or sideline opinions it disapproves of.

Except for some peevish remarks last year following the passage of Chicago's "bring the troops home now" city council resolution, and remarks after his son enlisted, Daley has kept a low profile on the war issue. Nonetheless, his support of the unpopular war appears to be a tacit bargain with the Bush administration -- support the war and in return, keep on the gravy train of federal Homeland Security dollars and money earmarked for the militarization of the city's schools.

Like his father, the current mayor allows unconstitutional violations of the 1st Amendment with aim of defeating an anti-war movement ever more insistent upon exercising those rights. Defeat of this ordinance would be an important step towards restoring some of the liberties lost after 9/11.