GA city repeals ordinance used to stifle free speech

 

Thanks to Fredric Baumann's persistence and the efforts of his legal team, it's now lawful to hand out gospel tracts on the public sidewalks in Cumming, Georgia. 

 

 

Baumann was recently arrested for handing out Christian literature on a public sidewalk outside the City of Cumming Fairgrounds. Law enforcement officials claimed he was in violation of the city's parade ordinance, and held Baumann in jail for two days.
 
David Cortman, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, calls the incident "one of those incredible cases that you would never expect to happen in America." "First of all, the sidewalk was 15 feet wide. So, it wasn't like one gentleman was blocking the sidewalk," argues Cortman.
 
The attorney also claims Baumann was not given a chance to explain what he was doing. "They said, 'Do you have a permit for being here?' And he said, 'No, I don't.' And they arrested him," he points out.
 
While he understands how a police officer could make an honest mistake in interpreting a poorly written city ordinance, Cortman admits he does not understand the response of the city's attorney. "Rather than the charges being dropped after that stage, the city solicitor went ahead and charged him, tried him ... [and] put him in jail for two days," he adds.
 
On top of that, Cortman says the city continued to defend their actions in the state and the federal court. And the trip to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia is what finally opened city officials' eyes. It was in that court that a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the city, and the parade permit ordinance was repealed.
 
The ADF attorney says Baumann's case points out a strategy often used to shut down sidewalk ministries. "When someone is arrested on a public sidewalk -- for example, for handing out religious leaflets -- there's generally never a law that says, 'You can't hand out religious tracts on a public sidewalk.' They're a little bit smarter than that," he explains. "But what they do is ... apply parade ordinances or nuisance ordinances or any kind of tangential ordinance that's not even supposed to apply to free speech."
 
According to the senior legal counsel, the ultimate result in this case will show "other cities in the area that they cannot use some other form of regulation to stop someone from engaging in free speech."

now a day you have to go to court to have your first amendment right protected, unbelievable...

This is a sign of things to come.  Three cheers for U.S. District Court for standing on the side of free speech and this mans right to it!  Let's hope there will be others that will stand for the Constitution and it's true meaning.  What is going on in the heads of these cops,  and who trains them to pull this kind of stunt?  We need to find out how they are being trained to go against the U.S. Constitution and why in the heads of U.S. citizens would this be okay.  Especially if they are part of law enforcement.  I can't help but wonder if they are really this "dumb" about the rights of the citizens?