Florida Judge Who Tried to Ban Protests Forced to Backtrack After Lawsuit Filed

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This story is another example of what can happen when unethical people in positions of power feel like they can get away with anything. In the following case, Jacksonville Florida’s chief judge, Mark Mahon, issued an administration order on July 1 that:

In part banned demonstrations or dissemination of materials on the courthouse grounds that “degrade or call into question the integrity of the court or any of its judges.” The order also banned people from videotaping “all security features” of the courthouse, including any non-public entrance or exit.

The irony of a judge issuing a ban on the First Amendment on courthouse grounds should not be lost on anyone. What’s worse, he may have even gotten away with it if not for the folks at PINAC (Photography is Not a Crime), who sued the judge, and sheriff Mike Williams, forcing these two officials with fascist sympathies to back off.

The Florida-Times Union reports that:

Chief Judge Mark Mahon struck his previous administrative order and wrote a new one Tuesday, the same day that two activists filed a federal lawsuit calling his ban against some protests unconstitutional.

Mahon issued an order July 1 that in part banned demonstrations or dissemination of materials on the courthouse grounds that “degrade or call into question the integrity of the court or any of its judges.” The order also banned people from videotaping “all security features” of the courthouse, including any non-public entrance or exit.

Jeff Gray and Thomas Covenant, civil rights activists and reporters for the website Photography is Not a Crime, sued Mahon and Sheriff Mike Williams on Tuesday, saying the new order violated their First-Amendment rights.

Also Tuesday, Mahon wrote a new administrative order that “vacates and supersedes” the previous one. It continues the ban against photography of secure areas and security features, but he eliminated the ban against protests that question the court’s integrity.

Earlier Bonderud had said about the original administrative order, “This is ripped straight from the pages of Fidel Castro’s operating plan.”

Bonderud’s grandparents came to America from Cuba as political refugees, he said before the new order struck the old one. He spent a semester studying in Cuba.

There, he said, the people have a saying. Roughly translated, it means: You can debate in favor of Communism and the Cuban revolution. You just can’t debate against it.

“And that’s exactly what’s going on here. It’s alarming. It’s very, very alarming,” he said. “It’s perfectly analogous to the censorship that goes on in Cuba. It’s such a shame that I have to compare policy in Jacksonville, Florida, the shining city on a hill, to policies that have been used by an oppressive regime in Havana.

“We’re going to do something about it.”