2008 ANNUAL REPORT - National Lawyers Guild

Mass Defense
Individuals and organizations trust and rely
on the National Lawyers Guild to monitor
large assemblies and smaller gatherings to
ensure that infringements of First Amendment
liberties do not go unchallenged. Our
unique legal observer program sends trained
observers to monitor law enforcement at rallies
and marches in an effort to create a safe atmosphere
for people to express their political views.
In addition, Guild members frequently take the
lead in representing those arrested and mounting
legal challenges to unconstitutional law
enforcement policies.
Sit-in at Des Moines
In a case that attracted national attention, Guild
member Sally Frank represented three of five
defendants charged with trespass for a sit-in at
Senator Grassley’s office in February 2007 as
part of a campaign to protest the war in Iraq.
In July 2007, a jury in Des Moines acquitted
the five of trespass. On May 21, 2008 a judge
dismissed charges of obstructing a federal office
that had also been filed against the activists in
federal court, finding them not guilty despite
their admission that they had refused an order
by a U.S. Department of Homeland Security
officer to leave the office. The five argued that
they had a First Amendment right to have their
grievances heard by the Senator, and that he
had refused to hear it. A local newspaper noted
that the verdict suggested that the jurors agreed
that the peace and justice activists’ freedom of
speech, right to assemble, and right to have
their grievances heard by their elected representative
had been abridged by their arrest and
removal from Senator Grassley’s office. The notguilty
verdict, the first following several trespassing
convictions over recent years by members
of the group, was considered a victory of mass
proportions.
Upholding Public Assembly in Florida
On May 18, 2007 the Guild settled a lawsuit
challenging parade and public assembly laws in
Fort Lauderdale. The U.S. District Court approved
a settlement agreement which prohibits
the City from enforcing ordinances allowing
officials to restrict political demonstrations on
public sidewalks and streets. The laws included
an exemption allowing “bona-fide religious
sects or organizations,” but not political groups,
to freely assemble and had no time limitation
on processing permits for parades and assemblies.
They also granted unlawful discretion
to government officials to deny permits based
on disagreement with the views expressed, and
unreasonably regulated the items that could be
used to convey a political message. Guild members
Carol Sobel, Robert Ross, Mara Shlackman
and Andrea Costello worked with lawyers from
Southern Legal Counsel and with the ACLU of
Florida.
Changing Law Enforcement Policy
On May 10, 2007, the Guild and attorneys
from the Mexican American Legal Defense and
Educational Fund (MALDEF), filed a class action
lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles on
behalf of the community groups who organized
a May Day immigrants’ rights rally at MacArthur
Park. The event, held in the city’s heavily
Latino immigrant community, was disrupted
by the Los Angeles Police Department when
riot-gear clad officers swept through without
warning and ordered everyone to leave the park.
To date, videos of the rally and police action
have failed to substantiate the police claims of
provocation for the massive and brutal police
response. The suit seeks changes in how the Los
Angeles Police Department responds to demonstrations,
as well as damages for all of the peaceful
participants in the rally who were brutalized
by the police and chased from the park.