Point of View: Federal court ruling in OKC case is a victory for the First Amendment – Oklahoman.com

More than four years ago, Oklahoma City made it a crime to stand, sit, or stay on roadway medians to exercise the right of free speech. As then City Councilmember Meg Salyer explained, the anti-panhandling law responded to rising complaints from motorists about their quality of life [being] destroyed by the unseemly sight of panhandlers. On Monday, a federal appeals court struck down the law for violating the First Amendment.

The court agreed with the lawsuit that I filed with the ACLU and Legal Aid of Oklahoma on behalf of panhandlers, political activists, the Oklahoma Libertarian Party, Red Dirt Report and ordinary citizens. Our victory reaffirms the vital constitutional principle that the government generally lacks the power to prevent citizens from peacefully and safely speaking to each other in the public square.

In recent weeks, mass protests for racial justice and equality have demonstrated the critical importance of respecting those First Amendment freedoms.

The city shamefully defended its anti-panhandling law for years, with taxpayers footing the bill. To cover up blatant discrimination against our poorest and least popular citizens, the city applied the law to everyone. It consequently inflicted widespread collateral damage on the free speech of activists campaigning for votes on election day, protesters rallying for political change, firefighters filling the boot for charity and panhandlers begging for dollars to survive.

In court, the city had the gall to contend that it adopted the law for no other purpose than traffic safety. Yet the city failed to find a single accident involving a pedestrian on a median in its decades of records. By contrast, hundreds of bicyclists, runners and lately scooters have gotten hit in active lanes of traffic. Tellingly, the city still permits those much more dangerous activities. As the appeals court concluded, the city utterly failed to justify its mass suppression of free speech as a purported traffic-safety measure.

The city has squandered four years of legal work defending its violation of the free speech rights of residents. Worse, as The Oklahoman has reported, the city has spent well over $100,000 paying a private law firm to assist its defense. And with our victory, federal civil rights law makes the city liable for our legal fees to deter it from violating the constitutional rights of citizens in the future.

This has been a costly and avoidable civics lesson. Hopefully next time our elected city leaders will heed calls not only to respect the rights of citizens, but also to devote limited public resources to rooting out poverty rather than sweeping the impoverished out of sight.

Thai is a professor of constitutional law at the University of Oklahoma.

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Point of View: Federal court ruling in OKC case is a victory for the First Amendment - Oklahoman.com