Judge rules Utah city violated first amendment when it refused permit for drag show | Boing Boing
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A federal judge ruled that St. George, Utah, violated the U.S. constitution when it denied a permit to a drag show, and must allow the all-ages event to go ahead in a public park. “Public spaces ar…
  • IHeartBadCode
    2•1 year ago

    This was a motion for preliminary injunction. Typically a prohibitive injunction is what is granted, that is a return back to status quo. However, the Judge indicated that the city is so likely to act in bad faith, there is no way to both protect the status quo and the plaintiffs’ first amendment right. And so the court is ordering the city to grant the permit and allow them to hold their event on June 30th, which is a mandatory injunction as it forces the city to do something rather than return to status quo.

    because of the plentiful evidence of the animus of the Defendants towards Plaintiffs’ speech, relief granted Plaintiffs cannot assume there will be a fair review the application.

    Having read the opinion by the Judge, this is a completely bonkers case. I won’t go into detail y’all can read for yourself, but the city’s entire case hinged on an ordinance passed in 2015 that has never been used before. And that the only use of the ordinance was this one time and no other time even though several violations of the ordinance occurred in the past. Only this group was subject to the ordinance. And then when the Judge asked “Why it be like that?” Holy fuck, you could not find a group tripping over it’s feet faster than had the city council been an octopus born with “oops all left feet”.

    I just hope Utah Drag Stars fucking takes this city to the cleaners in the actual trial. I think it would have been cheaper for the city to just hand the drag stars a permit rather handing them a pretty fucking solid case.

    Also, why is there this consistent pattern of people doing bad shit and then fucking ruining any hope for “maybe succeeding” in court by posting to the Internet shit that’s just going to be entered into the record and destroy any kind of “plausible deniability”? Like, the city’s argument only become pretextual when one of the members gets on the horn and indicates she specifically holds an idea of what the first amendment means that distinctly DOES NOT match the actual legal understanding of the first amendment. She could have said JACK SHIT and there might have been a remote possibility to take this into court without the injunction. It’s like that scene from Shrek 2 “you HAVE the right to remain silent. What you lack, is the capacity!”

    I get the case is still pending, but goddamn, it can’t happen fast enough to stop the city from blowing their feet off with a goddamn hand canon.