It’s rare for Mississippi to draw significant national attention in a single week, but last week the Supreme Court kept the state in the spotlight with two major cases – one a unanimous decision on a protestor’s free speech rights at a public performance venue, and the other a voting rights case that could impact both state and federal elections.
More specifically, the case of Gabriel Olivier v. City of Brandon concerned whether Olivier – a self-proclaimed Christian “public evangelist” and owner/operator of a lawn care service – can legally challenge a Brandon city ordinance that establishes a designated “protest zone” for demonstrators at the Brandon Amphitheater, even if he has previously been convicted of violating the ordinance.
The Brandon Amphitheater is one of Mississippi’s top modern performance venues. Owned by the City of Brandon, it can host between 7,000 and 8,300 spectators for concerts and events.
Olivier and members of his religious group visited the venue multiple times from 2018 through 2021 to preach the gospel and distribute materials. City officials stated in court filings that Olivier called amphitheater patrons “whores” and other insults over a loudspeaker and held signs with scriptures and images of aborted fetuses. In 2019, the city enacted an ordinance establishing the protest zone.
In 2021, Olivier tested the ordinance by leaving the protest zone and moving closer to the venue’s seating area, resulting in his arrest. In June 2021, Olivier pleaded no contest, meaning he did not admit guilt but did not dispute the charges. He was fined $304 and placed on probation for one year.
A few months later, Olivier challenged the ordinance under which he was convicted by filing a federal civil rights claim against the city. The City of Brandon argued that Olivier was barred from pursuing legal action due to a prior court ruling in the 1994 Heck v. Humphrey case, which established that individuals could not bring civil rights claims to overturn a previous conviction or sentence.
A Mississippi federal district court and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. However, in a 9-0 unanimous decision written by Justice Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court held that Olivier should be allowed to legally challenge the Brandon ordinance. “The suit, after all, is not about what Olivier did in the past, and depends on no proof addressed to his prior conviction,” Kagan wrote. “The suit merely attempts to prevent a future prosecution.”
The constitutionality of “free speech” or “protest zones” has been examined by federal courts for years. Nonetheless, the ability of jurisdictions to restrict protests to such areas generally depends on following three core principles: restrictions must be content-neutral, narrowly tailored to serve a specific government interest, and must offer alternative channels for protestors to communicate with the public.
In the other major Mississippi case to be heard by the Supreme Court, the justices will hear arguments in Watson v. Republican National Committee. The case seeks clarity on differences between Mississippi law and federal law regarding absentee ballots as the justices decide whether federal law requires voters to cast their ballots on Election Day and for election officials to receive those ballots by the same deadline. Mississippi allows ballots to be received and counted up to five days after Election Day.
In 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mississippi changed election laws to permit mail-in absentee ballots to be counted as long as they were postmarked by and received within 5 business days of Election Day.
Veterans, senior citizens, and rural voters believe that Mississippi’s current law is important for protecting their rights. Nine other states filed amicus briefs supporting the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which held that all election activities – including absentee ballots – should follow the Election Day standard.
Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson told the Huffington Post on March 20 “that the effort to invalidate the state’s right to set its voting rules would ’invalidate laws in most states, will spark nationwide litigation, and will risk chaos in the next federal elections’ — an assertion, he pointed out, that neither political party disagreed with. He added that changing the regulation would have ‘profound practical ramifications’ for election officials, who would need to receive and count all votes in a single day.”
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.
10 comments:
The movie will be released in late Spring. Mississippi Yearning.
Well, what could happen is that instead of protecting him from a crowd of angry whores, and satanic music lovers, RCSO could let the demonic Sodomites beat him and recreate that scene when Lot offered his virgin daughters to the Sodomite mob in the Book of Genesis!
What an interesting Bible fellowship that could be!
Of course what comes later from Lot and his daughters is also very… Rankin County ðŸ˜ðŸ¤£
Pastor Olivier should be protesting the incessant number of bro country acts that are held at the amphitheater.
Hear, hear!
There's nothing like calling people whores that really shows the love of GOD. For those that don't know, that first sentence is sarcasm.
Olivier violated the Constitution’s “guarantee of free speech in the government-designated-free-speech area” as well as the “guarantee of free speech unless and until the speaker calls someone a whore.”
Honest question: When was the last time Sid wrote something that was truly relevant for Mississippians?
KF: If I were King, I would make it harder for people to qualify and to actually vote. Society can be broken down to “producers” and “takers”. The producers are those individuals who contribute financially to the public weal. Takers, are those people who receive government benefits, but do not contribute financially to the public weal. It is a given that federal and state legislators enact laws that they believe will be favourable to their voter bases. Therefore, if legislators were free from the yolk of pandering to the takers of society, they would enact only those laws that would be financially responsible and beneficial to the public at large. This approach would also mean that only those legislators who represent the interests of all of society would get elected in the first place. Annual budgets would be balanced, taxes would be reduced, and the government would be able to pay down on the public debt. Our Founding Fathers were all productive members of society. They never envisioned that our republican form of government would be dominated by society’s takers. They envisioned that government would promote investment and hard work so that the public weal could prosper as a whole. They would be aghast at the prospect of the takers dominating the electorate, and thereby pushing the country into a socialist state.
@10:48 - Nothing is more relevant to our state than how the courts handle challenges to our state laws. Name one single thing more relevant than that.
Ok, Maybe the city shouldn't own an amphitheater. if it was private, not a problem, he can be arrested for trespassing. The government shouldn't rob peter to pay paul. And Taxes are just Legalized theft. Sorry, not sorry. Easy fix, Sell the amphitheater and then you don't have to worry about him. As long as it is PUBLIC PROPERTY anyone of the PUBLIC has a right to be there.
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