Two anti-abortion groups on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, in response to an August incident in which police arrested activists for writing “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” outside a Planned Parenthood clinic.
The arrests, which came after Bowser authorized the eponymous street-painting in Black Lives Matter Plaza, represent a violation of First Amendment rights to free expression, Denise Harle, the attorney representing the groups, told the Washington Examiner. The two groups, Students for Life of America and the Frederick Douglass Foundation, argue that the city responded more harshly to their protests than to racial justice activists behind the White House.
“The bottom line is that D.C. is discriminating against certain viewpoints by allowing some voices to be heard and others to be punished,” said Harle, a senior counsel at the free speech nonprofit group Alliance Defending Freedom.
The conflict arose in early August when two anti-abortion activists received permission to demonstrate in front of a Planned Parenthood in Northeast Washington. The groups also applied for a permit to paint a mural in front of the clinic but did not receive a response. Members of the groups went ahead with painting, after receiving verbal permission from a police officer, according to the complaint filed in a D.C. federal court.
When they arrived at the clinic, however, other police officers told them that they would be arrested if they wrote anything on the sidewalk. Two protesters crouched to the ground and began chalking their message. Police arrested them immediately.
Video of the incident showed one of the protesters telling police that they had been chalking the sidewalk every Saturday morning for several weeks without incident. After the arrests, other people present began chanting, “Black pre-born lives matter.”
The groups’ complaint alleges that police, in arresting the activists while allowing protesters to write in Black Lives Matter Plaza uninhibited, amounted to discrimination against anti-abortion views.
“Members of the Plaintiff organizations were arrested for merely chalking a small message, comprising not even half the width of the public sidewalk, with washable sidewalk chalk,” it said. “The Plaintiffs were completely unable to communicate their message that ‘Black Pre-Born Lives Matter’ in a manner identical to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Defund the Police’ murals painted in permanent yellow paint on the public streets of the District.”
Religious groups in the past few months have raised similar lawsuits, alleging that city and state governments have not afforded them the same rights to hold religious services as they have to protesters gathering in the streets. In October, the federal D.C. district court ruled that Bowser had discriminated against Capitol Hill Baptist, a church that sued the city on these grounds.
Noting Bowser’s approving statements of the racial justice protests, the court wrote that the city implies it “favors some gatherings (protests) over others (religious services).”
