A federal judge ruled in favor of a Christian preacher who sued Seattle after he was arrested for proselytizing at a pro-choice rally.
The order permanently blocks the city and police from using a local obstruction-of-police ordinance against Meinecke “in public parks, streets, or other traditional public fora based on real or anticipated hostile reaction of an audience.”
In the settlement, the city agreed to pay Meinecke $35,000 in compensatory damages, along with $80,000 for attorney’s costs, his lawyer, Nate Kellum, told The Epoch Times. Kellum is senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit public interest law firm based in Plano, Texas.
The case goes back to June 24, 2022, when pro-abortion activists held a rally to protest the Supreme Court’s decision earlier that day in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade (1973). Dobbs held that abortion was not a constitutional right and returned regulation of abortion to the states.
Meinecke said he attended the rally to read the Bible aloud, display a sign, and distribute literature, but not to condemn abortion.
According to the law firm, attendees grabbed his Bible, ripped out pages, knocked him to the ground, and took one of his shoes.
“However, the police officers did not offer to help Meinecke. While Meinecke was still on the ground, grimacing from the attack, police officers ordered Meinecke to leave the area,” the complaint stated.
Police directed Meinecke to retreat to a space where he could no longer communicate his message. When he refused to comply, they arrested him.
Two days later, he visited the Seattle Center, a public park where Seattle PrideFest, an LGBT event, was being celebrated. Again, he was mistreated by attendees, and police again arrested him for refusing to move to another location.
Meinecke was charged with obstructing a police officer under the Seattle Municipal Code. The city argued that a police officer can make a speaker leave a public forum if the speech engenders a hostile reaction and “creates a risk of injury,” according to the legal complaint.
The complaint said that this amounts to an unconstitutional heckler’s veto, which gives “those who oppose speech ... the power to censor it by simply being hostile toward it.”
In an April 2023 filing, the city said this was not a case about silencing speech. Instead, the case was about “reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on speech.”
Time, place, and manner restrictions, a part of First Amendment law, regulate when, where, and how expression can take place.
The city said Meinecke’s “extensive effort to construe this case as a vendetta to silence him is inconsistent with the facts.”
The city said it did not prohibit his speech. Instead, it limited his speech in a constitutionally acceptable way that was content-neutral and narrowly tailored and that left open “ample alternative channels for communication.”
The federal district court denied Meinecke’s request for a preliminary injunction against Seattle in June 2023.
In April of this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed that decision and issued a preliminary injunction against the city.
“The restrictions on his speech were content-based heckler’s vetoes, where officers curbed his speech once the audience’s hostile reaction manifested,” the circuit court said. “Meineke established irreparable harm because a loss of First Amendment freedoms constitutes an irreparable injury, and the balance of equities and public interest favors Meinecke.”
In the settlement, the parties agreed that a permanent injunction would be issued against the city.
“This result is only fitting,” Kellum said. “The government should never silence the speech of a citizen just because an audience dislikes what it’s hearing,” he said. “Pastor Meinecke is thrilled to put this case behind him and get back to sharing the gospel on the streets of Seattle.”
A spokesman for the city declined to comment.
“We’ll pass at this time,” Tim Robinson, communications manager for the Seattle City Attorney’s Office, said by email.
