Birmingham mayor denies gay parade permit:

According to the Birmingham News, the mayor has rejected a request for a gay pride parade in the city:

Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford won't sign a proclamation for an annual gay pride celebration or allow banners on city property, and said he will not grant the sponsoring group a parade permit.

Langford said he turned down the requests this week from Central Alabama Pride because it is inappropriate for government to endorse a lifestyle. Pride Week is next month and often includes a parade on Southside and other events.

"My policy is don't ask because it's not my business, and don't put me in the position to make it my business," Langford said Friday. "I don't condone it, but I also am not sitting in judgment on anyone."

Still Langford's stance angered some members of the city's gay community.

"It doesn't hurt my feelings, because we're not politically on the same page. I'm offended more so," said Ronald Simoneau, a participant in the parade since 1989. . . .

"I did the first gay pride march in 1989," Simoneau said "At that time, even the police were a little worried then, but we've never had a problem at all." . . .

The story gives no detail about the criteria the mayor may use to deny a permit under the city's code; nor does it say anything about whether the mayor's decision may be appealed. It may be that the mayor has other reasons to deny the permit but that those reasons are not given in the story.

Under the First Amendment, an official charged with reviewing permits for speech in a public forum cannot deny applications based on the content of the speech in the parade or demonstration. The government doesn't get to pick and choose speakers and messages that may be heard in a public forum based on whether the government likes or dislikes those messages, or is afraid the government might be thought to approve them. That's what the mayor is doing when he says he does not want to appear to "endorse" the "lifestyle" advocated by the parade. If there are no content-neutral reasons for the denial of the permit — such as a scheduling conflict with another parade — the decision is unconstitutional.

UPDATE: The mayor has reversed his decision and has now agreed to issue the parade permit.

Related Posts (on one page):

  1. The Birmingham Parade and the First Amendment:
  2. Birmingham mayor denies gay parade permit:
Comments
The Birmingham Parade and the First Amendment:

I agree entirely with Dale that denying a parade permit on content-based grounds — as the Mayor's state reasons are — is unconstitutional, and clearly so. For nearly 70 years, the Court has made clear that the streets, sidewalks, and parks, even if they are government property, are generally "traditional public fora" on which the government has no extra power to impose content-based restrictions (beyond the usual First Amendment exceptions, such as obscenity, threats, and the like). The government may not refuse to allow a parade on the grounds that it doesn't approve of the parade's message. (The government isn't even allowed to institute content-neutral bans on all parades, though it can impose some content-neutral regulations.)

The government need not allow banners on other parts of its property; but even there, it must act in a viewpoint-neutral manner when it comes to private speech — if it allows some speakers to put up such banners as their own speech (as opposed to expressly endorsing them as the government's speech), then it can't refuse access to other speakers based on those speakers' viewpoints.

The mayor is of course not constitutionally obligated to issue any proclamation supporting the parade — but he is constitutionally obligated not to deny parade permits based on content, or to deny access to most other parts of city property based on viewpoint.

UPDATE: Dale Carpenter reports that "The mayor has reversed his decision and has now agreed to issue the parade permit."

Related Posts (on one page):

  1. The Birmingham Parade and the First Amendment:
  2. Birmingham mayor denies gay parade permit:
Comments