Saturday, July 26, 2008

Protest groups and ACLU back in court next week

WE'VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com

The ongoing debate between convention protest groups and the city of Denver over protest rules continues in federal court next week:

A fenced-in area for demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention amounts to putting the proverbial "soapbox in the town square" inside a "caged pen" on the "outskirts of town."

Or so the American Civil Liberties Union and a host of protest groups plan to argue in federal court next week.

Not so, the City and County of Denver and the U.S. Secret Service plan to assert.

"To be clear, this so-called 'demonstration zone' is not an isolated area to which the city will confine demonstrators," lawyers for Denver argued in a brief filed on the eve of next Tuesday's trial to settle lingering First Amendment issues raised by protest groups and the ACLU.
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And the recently announced plans to move the last day of the convention across Interstate 25 to Invesco Field at Mile High further complicate the question, as the ACLU and the protest groups expect to raise the same issues there that they did at the Pepsi Center. - Rocky Mountain News