More than three and a half million people took to the streets in Washington, d C. In all fifty states on Saturday to protest peacefully in the Women's Marches, marching and demonstrating our rights that have been exercised in this country, to protest civil rights violations, the Vietnam War, LGBT rights. The list goes on, but now Republican lawmakers in five
states have introduced bills to criminalize peaceful protests. They ranged from a villa in Minnesota to increase fines for freeway protests up to three thousand dollars in a year in jail, to a villain North Dakota that would not penalize a driver who negligently runs over and kills protesters on highways. Our guest is Timothy Zike, professor at William and Mary Law School and author of Speech out of Doors Preserving
First Amendment Liberties in Public Places. Timothy, these target non violent protests and sound like violations of the First Amendment. Are they well? Some of them could be um, some of the laws might be deemed disproportionate to the government's interests, and things like UM, the free flow of traffic on
highways UH and public safety and order. In those sorts of things, there's a requirement that when you regulate speed, especially in traditional public forum which are things like public streets and public parks and sidewalks, that you do so with some measure of care. So some of these measures could violate the First Amendment through that sort of analysis.
Others seems to single out particular types of protests, for example, union protests, and the Supreme Court has been very clear, uh, indeed, with respect to laws that do exactly that, that the government doesn't have the power it cannot under the First Amendment single out particular speakers or messages under the First and Endment. So it's possible that at least some of these measures would violate current First Amendment free speech and
assembly standards. Timmy, even if they do, uh potentially violate the First Amendment, and even if they would get struck down, Uh, are there concerns that you have about them that they
would chill speech if they did go uh into effect. Yeah, I think even if they they didn't violate First Amendment doctrine, they seem to be inconsistent with what you might say is the spirit of the First Amendment freedom of speech and free assembly in the places that I mentioned, uh, in the sense that they seem to be designed to chill or suppress UM protests. Now, on the flip side of that, we have to acknowledge there is no First
Amendment right to block traffic. There's no First Amendment right, uh to engage in this sort of disruptive behavior that some of the protesters have engaged in. So you have to give the state its due in the sense that it's allowed to um, you know, pass laws to maintain public order and safety. But the concern is that many of these laws, most of the facts, seem to go beyond that their existing laws that, for example, punished that that sort of civil disobedience, but these laws seek to increase.
Find for example, the ten thousand dollars to make the
offensive felony as opposed to misdemeanor. And think about the disportmate impact that those sorts of laws have on students on the poor, who may not be able to afford that kind of judgment, and then for whom civil disobedience becomes um costly uh in the sense of fines and potential imprisonment, And the calculus changes quite a bit in that sense, Tim very surprising is the bill in North Dakota that would not penalize a driver who negligently runs
over and kills protesters on highways. No, they shouldn't be blocking the highway, let's say. But that seems to take
this out of the hands of the police and the courts. Well, I'm surprised by that when I hadn't I hadn't seen that before brought to my attention, and I have to say, it completely flips around the understanding again under the First Amendment, that protesters are entitled to use these traditional public forums for protests and civil disobedience and communicating in all sorts of manners, and to make it dangerous for them, and the sense that you provide an immunity to a driver
who negligently runs over a protester. Um. I don't want to say it encourages reckless behavior, but it might. And it certainly is wildly inconsistent with the tradition we've had in this country of allowing protesters, even when they're disruptive, to have their say, to engage in assembly, to engage in mass protests in public streets. Tim there's also some legislation in Minnesota involving uh, penalties for obstructing the legal process. Are you familiar with that, and if you can, you
explain what that means. Well, I'm not sure exactly what it means. There might be part of the problem could be there could be a vagueness problem with laws and ordinances of that sort. A person who is subject to the law has to know in plain English what the
law forbid um. If it is the case that that is um some sort of public order offense, that a protester who doesn't immediately cooperate in some way, who stands in this place as opposed to another, and is arrested on that basis, then the concern with laws like that and all sorts of public order laws is the massive discretion that those laws placed in the hands of officers who can arrest for what would seem manly be very minor offenses and again subject protesters and assemblers to um
some very strict penalties. Jim, we will have to leave it there for now. That's Tim Zike, professor at William and Mary Law School,