Religious Abortion Parade Protesters Win Speech, But Not Free Exercise, Claim

In Grove v. City of York, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1837 (MD PA, January 10, 2007), a Pennsylvania federal district court held that relegating religious abortion-protesters in a Halloween parade to the least obtrusive rear of the march violated their free expression and free assembly rights. However it did not violate their right to the free exercise of religion since the group would have been placed at the rear of the parade even if their anti-abortion views were solely secular. The city had attempted to justify its action on the ground that the pictures of aborted fetuses carried by the protesters would be offensive to many onlookers.