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The Press-Enterprise March 31, 2004 Protesters win sign decision A federal judge rules Riverside's ordinance may violate the First Amendment. By DOUG HABERMAN The Press-Enterprise Anti-abortion protesters who target a clinic in downtown Riverside have won a First Amendment battle in federal court that could force the city to change one of its laws. U.S. District Court Judge Robert Timlin has granted a preliminary injunction that will require the city to allow the protesters, many of whom are members of Calvary Chapel in Romoland, to continue to place or hold large stationary signs on the sidewalk outside the Family Planning Associates clinic a couple blocks away from the Mission Inn. One or two of these large signs contain graphic images of fetuses that the protesters say were aborted. A judge has ruled that signs such as the one held by U-Turn for Christ Ministries member Glenn Griego of Perris will be allowed in public right-of-ways. Griego was in front of a medical clinic in downtown Riverside on Tuesday. City officials confiscated the signs twice, once in December and again in January, arguing that their placement on the sidewalk violated the city's sign ordinance. In granting the injunction, Timlin indicated the protesters were likely to succeed in showing the ordinance violates the First Amendment. The injunction will stay in effect until the case is resolved through a settlement or a judgment or the City Council changes the ordinance so it complies with the First Amendment. Timlin found that the city bans signs in the public right-of-way then exempts various categories of signs from the ban, including directional signs, historical information signs and some types of commercial signs. "Since the city has chosen to allow certain commercial signs to be placed in the public right-of-way, it cannot prohibit signs with noncommercial messages from being placed in the public right-of-way without violating the First Amendment," Timlin wrote. Political speech is more protected by the First Amendment than commercial speech, said Michael Kumeta, the La Mesa attorney who represents the protesters. The city is "discriminating against political and religious speech while promoting less-protected commercial speech," he said. Jeb Brown, supervising deputy city attorney in Riverside, said the city didn't go after the protesters because of the nature of their signs but because the protesters sometimes left the large signs - roughly 3 feet tall by 5 feet wide - unattended on the sidewalk where they could blow over and hit a pedestrian or block foot traffic. "The content of their message is completely irrelevant to any analysis the city undertook" of the situation, he said. "Our interest is only in public safety." Kumeta said the city could overhaul the sign ordinance so that it is fair - by excluding all signs from the public right-of-way or allowing just about any kind of sign there. "It has to apply equally to everyone," he said. Or the city could continue fighting in court and try to win the judge over despite what he said in his order, Kumeta said. "The onus is on the city to decide what it wants to do," he said. Brown said that in light of the judge's decision, the city will have to re-evaluate the ordinance to make sure it isn't discriminatory. As for the city's next step, "we're still taking a look at the court's order and deciding what we're going to do." Last Friday, about 10 people stood or walked outside the clinic, some of them women in bright green shirts that said "abortion is murder." John Schwab, a Gavilan Hills real estate broker, was overseeing the protest and holding up one of the large signs showing a bloody fetus. "I didn't want any battle with Riverside," he said. But after city officials twice took the signs away, there was no choice, he said. "We just wanted that stopped." |
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