Free speech zones proliferated on college campuses within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties to restrict the place protesters might show.
However the zones pale away within the 2000s after a sequence of courtroom rulings decided such restrictions on public areas violated the First Modification.
Municipalities and faculties couldn’t legally place blanket bans on free speech in public areas — particularly in parks which can be thought of neighborhood boards, the courts dominated.
That’s why Laura Hois was shocked final July when she noticed a 15-by-15-foot “free speech zone” marked in a nook of Fishel Park in Downers Grove.
She got here to the park to advertise her candidacy for the DuPage County Board earlier than a live performance. However a Downers Grove Park District worker advised her that she couldn’t mingle and discuss politics with attendees, she stated. She might solely achieve this within the “free speech zone.”
“I used to be upset by it,” Hois stated. “It’s utterly un-American.”
Civil rights teams agree with Hois that the Downers Grove Park District is overstepping in its try to limit speech in its parks.
The First Modification requires the municipalities govern free speech “with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer,” stated Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy for the Basis for Particular person Rights and Expression, or FIRE.
His group is demanding the park district change its ordinance that limits free speech in eight public areas, together with Fishel Park and McCollum Park.
“The elemental mistake … is the concept the federal government can convert a conventional public discussion board right into a private discussion board by fiat,” FIRE stated in a March 6 letter to the Park District. “Below well-settled First Modification doctrine, it can not.”
The group is demanding a response from the park district, which says it is going to reply by a March 20 deadline.
Derke Worth, company counsel for the Park District, stated the free speech zones have been created final yr out of a priority for security. The ordinance was made in response to nationwide protests throughout President Donald Trump’s first time period, Worth stated.
He pointed particularly to considerations about protesters and counter-protesters throughout a 2017 Toby Keith live performance at Rib Fest in Naperville.
Worth stated the ordinance is lawful as a result of it solely restricts free speech throughout park district programming akin to soccer video games or concert events.
“All we’re attempting to do is information you to the suitable locations for a pop-up demonstration,” Worth advised the Solar-Instances.
Terr stated the ordinance isn’t clear if speech is allowed outdoors of free speech zones when park actions are usually not taking place.
“The principle downside with the ordinance is it claims no a part of a public park is a public discussion board until the federal government says so,” Terr stated.
Rebecca Glenberg, senior supervising lawyer for ACLU Illinois, stated she discovered it “notably disturbing” that the ordinance could possibly be utilized to a single individual distributing literature in a park.
“That may be a very unobtrusive sort of speech that must be allowed in just about each space of a public park, until there’s some explicit cause why some space is unsuited for it,” Glenberg stated.
In 2020, a federal choose struck down an ordinance in Chicago that restricted speech in massive components of Millennium Park. A number of college students from Wheaton School had sued town of Chicago, saying a municipal ordinance unconstitutionally prevented them from passing out non secular supplies.
An space akin to a free speech zone was created outdoors the Democratic Nationwide Conference final summer season when town confined protests and speeches to a park simply north of the United Middle.
“Typically we are likely to look with disfavor on that,” Glenberg stated. “Typically, when there are huge crowds. it’s arduous to handle alternate options. However that’s an distinctive state of affairs.”
Hois stated she hopes the Downers Grove Park District ordinance is repealed. She typically walks round her hometown talking with who she will be able to about politics. She stated she thinks the ordinance targets conservatives akin to her who’re the minority within the western suburb.
“We’ve acquired to say one thing,” Hois stated. “We are able to’t be silent in regards to the growth of the concept free speech zones shall be a factor now — that you simply’ll have stand in a field to talk for thoughts.”
Learn the total letter to the park district
