Court to hear free speech case of Christian protesters

DETROIT — A group of Christian evangelists from California claims that Wayne County sheriff's deputies failed to protect them when an angry crowd hurled water bottles, eggs, chunks of concrete and other objects at the Arab International Festival in Dearborn.

Instead, police told them to leave the June 2012 gathering.

An attorney for the Wayne County Sheriff's Office said the group, known for its provocative protests, was inciting a riot by carrying a pig's head mounted on a pole and shouting rhetoric attacking Islam.

Wednesday in a rare hearing before the full U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, justices will hear arguments on whether a lawsuit by the Bible Believers can proceed against Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon and two deputies.

The case involves issues of free speech and religion that have been widely discussed this year after the shootings of cartoonists in France who drew offensive images of Islam's prophet and in Copenhagen outside a free speech event.

"The Bible Believers have protested in a lot of other areas, and they have never been attacked like they were in the city of Dearborn," said Ann Arbor attorney Robert Muise of the American Freedom Law Center, who filed the lawsuit on the group's behalf.

Here's how the case unfolded:

When Ruben Chavez of California and his fellow Bible Believers rolled out onto Warren Avenue for the festival — one of the largest annual outdoor gatherings for Arab Americans in the U.S. — the police were out in force.

The Wayne County Sheriff's Office had 53 officers on the scene plus six horses. At the previous year's festival, the Bible Believers' presence generated shouting matches and occasional physical fights with tall signs and rhetoric attacking Islam while they rallied. The Bible Believers had sent a letter to them a few months earlier, asking for police protection in case of violence.

Chavez, also known as Ruben Israel, was their leader, a barrel-chested bald man with a wide goatee who often provokes groups — Catholics, gays, Mormons, Mardi Gras revelers — with his religious message. In 2012, he brought a pig's head to try to deliberately offend Muslims, who avoid pork and see pigs as unclean. Along with the pig were signs denigrating Islam and its prophet, Mohammed.

Soon, Chavez and his crew were attacked. He suffered a bloodied forehead, a gash that, ironically, appeared in the shape of a cross. They retreated as the debris flew at them, asking police for help.

But instead of helping to protect them, police asked the group to leave, video of the incident showed.

City officials and law enforcement officials maintain that officers merely were trying to protect public safety at a festival that draws hundreds of thousands of people in a packed location.

"What was law enforcement to do, wait until a riot broke out before asking the group to disperse?" said the attorney for the sheriffs, Nabih Ayad. "It was a decision to protect the public from harm."

Chavez "already had blood flowing from his forehead and if action was not taken immediately, a riot would have resulted," Ayad said.

"I support the First Amendment of our U.S. Constitution with full vigor," he said, "but I also must support the idea that there are times when it must take a backseat to matters which become an issue of public safety."

In 2013, organizers ended the annual Arab Festival because of higher insurance costs stemming from the religious tensions, including the 2012 clashes.

Last year in a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Wayne County, writing: "Although robustly guarded by the First Amendment, religious conduct remains subject to regulation for the protection of society."

The August decision upheld a previous ruling in May 2013 by U.S. District Judge Patrick Duggan, who threw out the lawsuit filed by Muise on behalf of the Bible Believers.

Muise appealed the 2-1 decision, and the federal appeals court agreed to hear the case in full, or en banc, a rare move that Muise believes indicates the court will overturn it.

The June 2012 incident was recorded on video and has gone viral, with one version garnering more than 1.8 million views. In one scene, Chavez is seen asking one of the deputies named in the suit, Dennis Richardson, for help to protect them.

"Where were you when the bottles were flying?" Chavez said to Richardson.

Richardson tells Chavez: "I'm not ... trying to jeopardize free speech" but we need to protect public safety.

"If you don't leave, we're going to cite you for disorderly" conduct, Richardson told Chavez.

Threatened with tickets, the Bible Believers left the festival.

Muise said the actions of the police — if upheld by the courts — would produce a "perverse incentive for hecklers" to get violent if they want to quash free speech. It also encourages law enforcement to shut down events they don't like if they can get angry crowds to turn violent.

"That sets a dangerous precedent," he said.

The Michigan branch of the ACLU agrees with Muise, which filed a legal brief in support of the Bible Believers.

Robert Sedler, a professor of constitutional law at Wayne State University who often teaches about First Amendment issues, also agrees that the rights of the Bible Believers were violated.

"The basic principle is that police have the responsibility to protect the speakers," Sedler said. "The speakers aren't doing anything wrong. The threat of violence or disorder is coming from the crowd. Under the First Amendment, the police have a duty to restrict the crowd."

"If we allow hostile groups to stifle speech, we fall into the same trap that we had with Nazis in Germany. That's how they tried to stifle the opposition, by trying to inflict violence on their opponents who were speaking out."

Muise said there's "a long history of Christians' free speech rights being suppressed in the city of Dearborn."

He said some of those cases include:

• Pastor George Saeig of California filed a lawsuit after he was prevented in 2009 by the City of Dearborn from handing out Christian pamphlets in 2009. Saeig won his case in the 6th Circuit of Appeals.

• In 2010, Dearborn police arrested four Christian missionaries with an evangelical group, Acts 17 Apologetics, for allegedly disturbing the peace. They were jailed overnight and put on trial, but they were acquitted. They filed a lawsuit and won $300,000 and an apology from the City of Dearborn posted on its website.

• In 2011, Wayne County prosecutors put Pastor Terry Jones on trial because he wanted to hold an anti-Islam rally outside the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn. After a trial, 19th District Judge Mark Somers threw him in jail. U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood ruled in his favor in 2013.

City and county officials say they have a responsibility to protect the public. In each of the cases, the potential for greater violence hung in the air, prompting them to act.

In his court filing, Ayad wrote: "Governmental entities retain the right to regulate the use of public streets to protect legitimate government interests in maintaining public order and avoiding violence."

The Wayne County deputies "reacted to the violent situation with their primary concern being public safety and was not in response to any particular message that the Bible Believers were conveying at the festival."