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Posted on 05/27/2014 8:42:58 AM PDT by BuckeyeTexan
The Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously rejected a lawsuit brought by anti-Bush protesters who claimed the Secret Service violated the First Amendment in 2004 by moving them away from President George W. Bush while allowing pro-Bush demonstrators to remain closer to him.
The case stemming from Bush's visit to a Jacksonville, Ore. inn about three weeks before the 2004 election appeared to ally the court's conservatives, who traditionally side with police, with liberals who are more skeptical of law enforcement but are often quite deferential when presidential security concerns are at stake.
"No decision of which we are aware...would alert Secret Service agents engaged in crowd control that they bear a First Amendment obligation 'to ensure that groups with different viewpoints are at comparable locations at all times,'" liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, quoting a conservative 9th Circuit judge who dissented earlier in the case's decade-long journey through the courts. "Nor would the maintenance of equal access make sense in the situation the agents confronted."
Ginsburg said it appeared the Secret Service agents did not intend to put the anti-Bush protesters at a disadvantage, but they were moved after the president made a decision to dine outside on a patio connected to the inn. Under those circumstances, she wrote, it was reasonable for the agents to move the anti-Bush protesters who found themselves in grenade-throwing range of the chief executive. And there was no need to move the pro-Bush crowd which was closer but lacked the same access to the patio, she said.
"We emphasize, again, that the protesters were at least as close to the President as were the supporters when the motorcade arrived at the Jacksonville Inn," Ginsburg wrote.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
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What a bunch of morons.
They were moved because they smelled nasty.
One of the few good decisions by the SCOTUS that actually favor conservatives and our First Amendment Rights.
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