The Oregon Supreme Court rules that police may not order peaceful assemblies to disperse and arrest those who disobey.
By Noelle Crombie, The Oregonian
The Oregon Supreme Court on Thursday struck down part of a law that allowed police to arrest protesters for failing to obey an order to disperse, saying it violates constitutional rights to free speech and assembly.
The court overturned a section of the state’s disorderly conduct statute that empowered police to disperse demonstrators if officers thought the gathering posed an inconvenience or annoyance to the public. Those who didn’t comply with the police order had been subject to arrest.
In its opinion, the court said demonstrators may intend to annoy or inconvenience the public.
“In fact, individuals often undertake the exercise of protected rights such as assembly or expression with the intent of causing public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm to those, such as government leaders, who are exposed to the assembly or expression,” the court said in an opinion written by Justice Paul De Muniz.
The ruling came in response to a 1998 Multnomah County case in which 11 people were arrested in Portland demonstrations about Iraqi bombing and May Day protests.
Attorneys for the demonstrators hailed Wednesday’s decision, saying it protects Oregonians’ right to assemble peacefully.
“This statute is the police’s strongest weapon against people who choose to exercise their freedom of speech and assembly in this town,” said Portland lawyer Stuart Sugarman, who coordinated the legal defense for the protesters. “And now, police will not have that weapon.”
The attorney general’s office and police on Thursday were sorting through the consequences of the court’s ruling.
“The court has moved the bar when it comes to police authority in cases in which people are assembling,” said Kevin Neely, a spokesman for the attorney general. “The challenge for law enforcement and our office and ultimately the courts is to determine where they have raised the bar to, and that is what we will be looking at closely.”
Portland’s Central Precinct Cmdr. Rosie Sizer said it’s too soon to say what impact the ruling will have on the way police handle protests. She said police consider “crowd size, composition and behavior and the negative impact on the community” before ordering a crowd to disperse.
“That is done, in my experience, occasionally -- certainly not by any means with every protest,” Sizer said.
The ruling comes as organizers prepare for a March 20 demonstration marking the first anniversary of the war in Iraq and the annual May Day demonstration. Last year, police arrested more than 135 people protesting the war, charging most of them with disorderly conduct and failing to obey police.
Laurie Abraham, a deputy district attorney for Multnomah County and the neighborhood prosecutor for central precinct, said no one was prosecuted in 2003 for failing to disperse under the disorderly conduct statute. She said most protesters who were arrested were charged with obstructing vehicular traffic.
Lawyers for the protesters arrested in 1998 said city officers rely heavily on the statute to control protests, often tacking the charge onto others, such as obstructing traffic. They said police have frequently ordered protesters to disperse even though no crimes were taking place, and when people refused, they were arrested.
“What ended up happening is they were looking for the most minute criminal act they can, and declare what is otherwise a peaceful and law-abiding assembly to be an illegal assembly,” said attorney Steven Sherlag, one of the lawyers representing the protesters.
Timothy Bowman, another lawyer representing the protesters, said the statute “pretty much gave police carte blanche to disperse any assembly that they chose to disperse.”
“You can’t forbid assemblies, which people in the community may find annoying, otherwise you are running roughshod over the right of people to petition their government about their grievances,” Bowman said. “That is how they do it. They get together and tell the government what they don’t like, and sometimes that annoys people or maybe even alarms them.”