Animal Rights Protests Were Protected Speech

State v. Peter, Minn.Ct.App., 5/3/2011.  Back on March 4, 2010, as was their wont, Mr. Peter and Mr. Lawson were conducting an animal rights protest outside Ribnick Fur; the men were chanting, carrying signs or banners and trying to talk to people (“Do you know they clubbed fifteen baby minks to make that fur coat you’re ogling?).  The men neither entered the store nor stopped any customers from entering the store.  They were yelling loudly.  They were heard to inform the owner of the fur store that they knew where he lived and that they knew his vehicle license plate number.  Some observers across the street claimed that the men were harassing customers so the officers arrested the pair for disorderly conduct.  A jury – all wearing fake rabbit - convicted them nonetheless.

The appellate court reverses for want of sufficient evidence.  Chanting about killing baby seals and the like is protected speech so long as it does not rise to the level of “fighting words.”  Back in the day, protesters who called police officers “mother fucking pigs” were thought to have crossed that line.  State, City of Minneapolis v. Lynch, 392 N.W.2d 700, 703-04 (Minn. App. 1986).  On the other hand, when a fourteen year old girl told two officers, who were sitting in a squad car thirty feet from her, “fuck you pigs,” she was protected from prosecution.  In re Welfare of S.L.J., 263 N.W.2d 412, 419-20 (Minn. 1978). 

Then there are matters of “public concern.”  Like gay bashing at funerals of servicemen killed in either Iraq or Afghanistan.  Snyder v. Phelps, 131 S.Ct. 1207 (2011).  As odious as it apparently was, the protest was protected speech.  Public protest cases, like this one, inevitably involve both speech and expressive conduct as well, like moving around, waving signs and the like.  Holding signs, chanting, commenting about killing baby seals – none of that is “fighting words.”  Doing all this, without benefit of a bullhorn,  on a downtown Minneapolis street in the afternoon was also protected.  For all that, the state’s evidence was insufficient to support a conviction of disorderly conduct.