After a California man was charged with attempting to assassinate
Supreme Court
Justice
Brett Kavanaugh
last month, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich
had a few thoughts
: “If everybody’s going to protest everybody who does something at their houses, we’re going to have a very hard time maintaining civil society.”
If only Elrich had the courage to match his convictions.
Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley sent a letter to Elrich this month and requested that he use his power as county executive to enforce Maryland law and end the Left’s new habit of harassing and intimidating Supreme Court justices at their homes.
“Protest activity at justices’ homes, as well as threatening activity, has increased since May,” Curley wrote. “For weeks on end, large groups of protesters chanting slogans, using bullhorns, and banging drums have picketed justices’ homes. … This is exactly the kind of conduct that the Maryland and Montgomery County laws prohibit.”
Curley’s letter cites Maryland Criminal Code Section 3-904(c), which states that “a person may not intentionally assemble with another in a manner that disrupts a person’s right to tranquility in the person’s home,” and Montgomery County Code Section 32-23(a), which says that “a person or group of persons must not picket in front of or adjacent to any private residence.”
Elrich, a Democrat, was unmoved by Curley’s request to protect conservative justices. Instead, Elrich attacked Curley for “using the media” to “further draw attention to the security of the justices’ homes and neighborhoods.” Of course, maybe there wouldn’t be a security problem to begin with if Elrich were to do his job and enforce the laws on the books.
Curley was not just picking on Elrich. She also sent a similar letter to Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeffrey McKay that cites Virginia Code Section 18.2-419, which makes it a criminal offense to engage in protests “before or about the residence or dwelling place of any individual … which disrupts or threatens to disrupt any individual’s right to tranquility in his home.”
McKay, a Democrat, also showed no interest in protecting conservatives from pro-abortion intimidation. “As long as individuals are assembling on public property and not blocking access to private residences, they are permitted to be there,” McKay said in a statement.
Public property or not, the sidewalk in front of a person’s private residence is nothing like his or her place of work. It makes perfect sense to demonstrate against public officials, but it’s quite another thing to intimidate justices and their families at their own homes.
As Republican Govs. Glenn Youngkin (VA) and Larry Hogan (MD) wrote in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland this May after a Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization draft was leaked to the press: “While protesting a final opinion from the Supreme Court is commonplace when done on the steps of the Court or in the public square, the circumstances of the current picketing at the justices’ private homes in residential neighborhoods are markedly different.”
That letter asked Garland to enforce 18 U.S. Code Section 1507, which makes it a crime to picket “near a building or residence occupied or used by [a federal] judge, juror, witness, or court officer.” That, too, was ignored.
To be fair, not every Democrat is blind to the obvious distinction between protesting in front of people’s homes and protesting in the public square. “Stay away from the homes and families of election officials and members of the court,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said after the Dobbs draft first leaked.
As we have
written
before, the First Amendment’s protection of “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” is absolutely essential to the continued success of American democracy. But a large group of people assembling outside someone’s private residence is an inherently threatening act and is not necessary to petition the government to redress a grievance. Those activities can both be done in the public square.
The only thing these pro-abortion activists and their Democratic enablers are accomplishing is the further erosion of trust and fairness that democracy requires.
