Appeals Court Upholds Pro-Life Activists’ Claim DC ‘Selectively’ Enforced Statute to Arrest Them But Not BLM Protesters

A federal appeals court ruled 3-0 Tuesday that the Washington, D.C., District Court had wrongly dismissed pro-life activists' lawsuit accusing the city of violating their First Amendment rights. The city had arrested pro-life activists for chalking a message on the sidewalk while permitting Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters to mark property without consequences.

During the summer of 2020, at the same time thousands of BLM protesters were taking to the streets of Washington, D.C., and covering public spaces with paint and chalk, two pro-life activists were arrested for chalking the words “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” on a public sidewalk.

The Frederick Douglass Foundation and Students for Life of America, who organized the pro-life protest and filed the lawsuit over the arrests, “plausibly alleged” that the statute’s enforcement was viewpoint discrimination, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found.

The appeals court ruling revived the pro-life protesters' legal case, remanding the case back to the district court to resolve the matter.

“The First Amendment prohibits discrimination on the basis of viewpoint irrespective of the government’s motive,” Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, wrote in the opinion for the court. “We hold the Foundation has plausibly alleged the District discriminated on the basis of viewpoint in the selective enforcement of its defacement ordinance.”

“The District all but abandoned enforcement of the defacement ordinance during the Black Lives Matter protests, creating a de facto categorical exemption for individuals who marked ‘Black Lives Matter’ messages on public and private property,” the ruling states.

Pro-life activists had a permit to assemble and verbal permission from a police officer to point their message, according to the ruling.

This article has been corrected. An earlier version of this article overstated the impact of the appeals court's ruling.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

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