Locals fight free speech restrictions at Denver International Airport – Colorado Springs Independent (blog)

When President Trump signed "the Muslim ban" into effect on Jan. 27, protests spontaneously erupted at airports across the country. They were the logical venue because the executive order indefinitely bars entry into the U.S. by Syrian refugees, temporarily bars entry by nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries and suspends all refugee applications.

So the chaotic implementation of the possibly unconstitutional policy played out inside airports, where travelers from those countries (including some permanent lawful residents and green card holders) were detained by Customs and Border Patrol agents as volunteer lawyers scrambled to put together habeas corpus petitions on their laptops using public Wi-Fi.

(Parts of the order have since been suspended, pending challenges to the policy as discriminatory on its face.)

Amidst this scene were the two plaintiffs in this case: Colorado Springs residents Eric Verlo and Nazli McDonnell. They went to join about a thousand others at Denver International Airport the weekend after Trump issued the ban. According to their civil rights complaint, filed in U.S. District Court on Monday, while other protesters danced, sang and prayed in Jeppesen Terminal near the secure CPB screening area, the plaintiffs"simply stood with placards showing their distaste for the Executive Order and the man who executed it."

Police officers reportedly told the protesters they couldn't be thereand suggested they move off-premise, six miles away to Tower Road (which, if you've ever been to DIA, you may recall is desolate prairie land.) They cited the airport's "Regulation 50" as reason.

Fox31's Emily Allen tweeted this photo of a leaflet notifying protesters of the regulation.

You can watch the interactions below:

Nobody was arrested that day. The next day, Verlo and McDonnell returned to DIA with their signs. Inside the terminal, they were allegedly threatened with arrest which, the complaint alleges, was a form of retaliatory punishment designed to chill future speech. The regulation cited above, they claim, is an unreasonable restriction of their First Amendment rights.

Denver-based attorney David Lane has filed the complaint on behalf of the plaintiffs. In the past, he has also defended professors' right to make distasteful Nazi analogies,agitators' right to say "fuck the police" to the police and activists' right to pass out leaflets on jury nullification in front of the court house.Lane helped organize the new Lawyers Civil Rights Coalition, which intends to doggedly defend Coloradans' civil rights during the Trump era.

The complaint alleges that its the content of speech that's being policed: "Upon information and belief, no individual has been arrested, or threatened with arrest, for wearing a 'Make America Great Again' campaign hat [or] holding a sign welcoming home a member of our military [or] holding a sign and soliciting passengers for a limousine [or] discussing current affairs with another person without a permit within the Jeppesen Terminal at Denver International Airport."

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Locals fight free speech restrictions at Denver International Airport - Colorado Springs Independent (blog)