Objective coverage of church-state and religious liberty developments, with extensive links to primary sources.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Christian Protester May Not Demonstrate On Handicap Access Ramp
After holding earlier this month that plaintiff’s case was a thin one, a Pennsylvania federal district court has now refused to grant a preliminary injunction to a Christian pro-life advocate who claimed that his free speech, freedom of assembly and free exercise rights were violated when a police officer threatened to arrest him if he insisted on protesting on the handicap access ramp that led into a Planned Parenthood clinic. In McTernan v. City of York, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 36907 (MD PA, May 21, 2007), the court held that the handicap access ramp is not a public forum. Instead, like the Post Office sidewalk at issue in the Supreme Court case of United States v. Kokinda, it is a non-public forum, and the police order was reasonable since demonstrators would have impeded the required accessibility the ramp was to offer.