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ACLU of Texas Files Lawsuit Over Restrictions on Protesters Outside President’s Ranch (6/30/2006)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Plaintiffs include Cindy Sheehan, Daniel
Ellsberg, & Ann Wright
WACO, TX —The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas today
asked a district judge to block McLennan County officials from enforcing orders
aimed at restricting anti-war protesters outside President Bush’s ranch in
Crawford, saying the orders violate free speech rights and exceed the officials’
authority.
“This suit is not about the president or politics.
It is not even about the war,” said Will Harrell, Executive Director of the ACLU
of Texas. “It is about the County Commissioners’ decision to overstep
their own authority in an effort to unlawfully restrict the protected activities
of a group of protesters and the media by limiting their access to space,
restroom facilities, and shelter from the elements.”
The ACLU is
representing Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004,
and became a leading voice against the war after going to Crawford last summer
in the hopes of meeting with President Bush. She was joined by
thousand of activists from across the country at “Camp Casey I,” including
plaintiff Daniel Ellsberg, author of the Pentagon Papers, and plaintiff Ann
Wright, a Colonel with the U.S. Army Reserve and former Deputy Chief of
Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, who resigned from the State
Department in protest of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The
challenged orders are aimed at shutting down Camp Casey I. The
orders specifically prohibit stopping and parking vehicles on specific roads in
McLennan County, and “residing, erecting shelters or erecting sewage receptacles
on the right of way of public roads.” The effect of the
orders, the ACLU said, was to force protesters to stand in direct sun at all
times in a location where temperatures in August regularly top 100 degrees, and
drive or walk 10 roundtrip miles each time they needed to use the bathroom, or
face arrest and possible criminal charges.
“The County
Commissioners do not have any legal authority to restrict access to roads beyond
that delegated to them by the state, but that is exactly what they did
here. The Commissioners also created a criminal penalty for a violation of
a state civil law, which is an action only the legislature can take,” said David
Broiles, a cooperating attorney and state board member of the ACLU of
Texas. “In its zeal to shut down the protests, the county simply
ignored the statutory restrictions on its authority and the relevant legal
definitions in the Texas Transportation and Natural Resources
Codes.”
Lisa Graybill, Legal Director of the ACLU of Texas, added:
"As recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions confirm, no governmental body -- be it
local, state, or federal -- is entitled to simply ignore the limits on its own
authority. And when it does so in order to squelch a message it doesn’t agree
with, as the county did in this case, it violates the most fundamental promise
of the First Amendment.”
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