You Can Protest, But Only How I Say You Can Protest

The supreme court recently issued a new rule that somewhat reduces the strictness of a 1949 rule prohibiting citizens from protesting and assembling on its plaza, but not by much. After a student, Harold Hodge, Jr. was arrested in 2011 for protesting police forces and their mistreatment of African Americans and Latinos, the court decided to lessen the intensity of the original regulation by adding a new one, that still bans “‘processions or assemblages” or the display of “a flag, banner or device designed or adapted to bring into public notice a party, organization or movement” in the Supreme Court building or on its grounds.” Although the decision lessens the rule first set up in the 40s, there are still arguments that the prohibition of organized protest and assemblages at the Supreme Court plaza directly violates the first amendment rights of citizens. The Supreme Court has hopes that new regulation will help the court keep its decorum and well-mannered demeanor, without the interruption from demonstrators. However, seeing that Constitution directly states that the government “shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” it is simple to see how the rule appointed by the Supreme court completely disregards the very first, and possibly most important amendment in the entirety of the U.S. Constitution.
Those representing the Supreme Court in the case, however, are defending the regulations made by the court by saying the law was necessary to allow the peaceful coming and going of visitors to the courthouse, as well as keep “the appearance of the court as a body not swayed by external influence.”

Hodge’s lawyer, John W. Whitehead, claims that the obstruction of the people’s freedom is unjust and “repugnant to the First Amendment,” because banning the rights of people to petition seems unnecessary and undoubtedly unconstitutional because it does directly breach what the Constitution has written clear as day.