Sid Salter
- Columnist Sid Salter takes a look at two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court that have drawn national attention.
It’s rare for Mississippi to draw significant national attention in a single week, but last week the Supreme Court kept the state in the spotlight with two major cases – one a unanimous decision on a protestor’s free speech rights at a public performance venue, and the other a voting rights case that could impact both state and federal elections.
More specifically, the case of Gabriel Olivier v. City of Brandon concerned whether Olivier – a self-proclaimed Christian “public evangelist” and owner/operator of a lawn care service – can legally challenge a Brandon city ordinance that establishes a designated “protest zone” for demonstrators at the Brandon Amphitheater, even if he has previously been convicted of violating the ordinance.
The Brandon Amphitheater is one of Mississippi’s top modern performance venues. Owned by the City of Brandon, it can host between 7,000 and 8,300 spectators for concerts and events.
Olivier and members of his religious group visited the venue multiple times from 2018 through 2021 to preach the gospel and distribute materials. City officials stated in court filings that Olivier called amphitheater patrons “whores” and other insults over a loudspeaker and held signs with scriptures and images of aborted fetuses. In 2019, the city enacted an ordinance establishing the protest zone.
In 2021, Olivier tested the ordinance by leaving the protest zone and moving closer to the venue’s seating area, resulting in his arrest. In June 2021, Olivier pleaded no contest, meaning he did not admit guilt but did not dispute the charges. He was fined $304 and placed on probation for one year.
A few months later, Olivier challenged the ordinance under which he was convicted by filing a federal civil rights claim against the city. The City of Brandon argued that Olivier was barred from pursuing legal action due to a prior court ruling in the 1994 Heck v. Humphrey case, which established that individuals could not bring civil rights claims to overturn a previous conviction or sentence.
A Mississippi federal district court and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. However, in a 9-0 unanimous decision written by Justice Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court held that Olivier should be allowed to legally challenge the Brandon ordinance. “The suit, after all, is not about what Olivier did in the past, and depends on no proof addressed to his prior conviction,” Kagan wrote. “The suit merely attempts to prevent a future prosecution.”
The constitutionality of “free speech” or “protest zones” has been examined by federal courts for years. Nonetheless, the ability of jurisdictions to restrict protests to such areas generally depends on following three core principles: restrictions must be content-neutral, narrowly tailored to serve a specific government interest, and must offer alternative channels for protestors to communicate with the public.
In the other major Mississippi case to be heard by the Supreme Court, the justices will hear arguments in Watson v. Republican National Committee. The case seeks clarity on differences between Mississippi law and federal law regarding absentee ballots as the justices decide whether federal law requires voters to cast their ballots on Election Day and for election officials to receive those ballots by the same deadline. Mississippi allows ballots to be received and counted up to five days after Election Day.
In 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mississippi changed election laws to permit mail-in absentee ballots to be counted as long as they were postmarked by and received within 5 business days of Election Day.
Veterans, senior citizens, and rural voters believe that Mississippi’s current law is important for protecting their rights. Nine other states filed amicus briefs supporting the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which held that all election activities – including absentee ballots – should follow the Election Day standard.
Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson told the Huffington Post on March 20 “that the effort to invalidate the state’s right to set its voting rules would ’invalidate laws in most states, will spark nationwide litigation, and will risk chaos in the next federal elections’ — an assertion, he pointed out, that neither political party disagreed with. He added that changing the regulation would have ‘profound practical ramifications’ for election officials, who would need to receive and count all votes in a single day.”
Sid Salter
