COLDWATER (WTVB) - The City of Coldwater’s legal battle with the Common Sense Patriots of Branch County went national for awhile Tuesday afternoon. Fox TV News had a segment featuring the attorney for the Tea Party group which filed suit in federal court in Grand Rapids last week charging the city violated the constitution’s guarantee to free speech when it passed a resolution in November banning signs and banners from all city parks.
Robert Muise, the senior trial counsel with the Ann Arbor based Thomas More Law Center, which brought the suit on behalf of the Patriots group, told Fox News that a city park is a traditional public forum and sign displays are a classic form of speech and the Tea Party’s speech, being political, rests on the highest rung of protections offered by the First amendment.
The city’s resolution was in response to complaints it heard concerning a banner the group used downtown in the Four Corners Park to promote rallies it held there last summer. City Attorney John Hutchinson said the resolution was intended only to address signs and banners placed or hung on poles or other properties and not to those that might be hand-held by someone.
He plans to draft language to amend the resolution to that end and looks for the city council to adopt the amendment, hopefully providing a solution to the controversy without going to court. Muise again criticized the resolution, saying that rather than using a scalpel the city applied a sledgehammer, banning all speech which he said is illegal.
