{"id":12019,"date":"2026-03-20T18:10:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T00:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/supreme-court-revives-suit-from-christian-challenging-restrictions-on-demonstrations\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T19:23:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T19:23:25","slug":"supreme-court-revives-suit-from-christian-challenging-restrictions-on-demonstrations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/supreme-court-revives-suit-from-christian-challenging-restrictions-on-demonstrations\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court revives suit from Christian challenging restrictions on demonstrations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The Supreme Court in Washington. (Rahmat Gul\/The Associated Press)<\/span>Rahmat Gul<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2013 The Supreme Court on Friday revived a lawsuit from an evangelical Christian barred from demonstrating in Mississippi after authorities said he shouted insults at people over a loudspeaker.<\/p>\n

The court unanimously ruled in the case of Gabriel Olivier, who said his religious and free speech rights were violated when he was arrested for refusing to move his preaching away from a suburban amphitheater. The city said he shouted insults such as \u201cwhores,\u201d \u201cJezebel\u201d and \u201cnasty\u201d at people and sometimes held signs showing aborted fetuses.<\/p>\n

Olivier sought to challenge the law as an unconstitutional restriction on free speech, but lower courts barred him from suing because he had been convicted of violating it. A Supreme Court case from the 1990s found people cannot use civil lawsuits to undermine criminal convictions.<\/p>\n

The justices found the precedent does not stop Olivier from suing because he is seeking only to block future enforcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven that Olivier asked for only a forward-looking remedy \u2013 an injunction stopping officials from enforcing the city ordinance in the future \u2013 his suit can proceed, notwithstanding his prior conviction,\u201d Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court.<\/p>\n

Olivier\u2019s lawyers said he was demonstrating peacefully when he was arrested for refusing to move to a designated \u201cprotest zone.\u201d They argued the legal principle affects free speech cases across the political spectrum.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not only a win for the right to share your faith in public, but also a win for every American\u2019s right to have their day in court when their First Amendment rights are violated,\u201d said Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of the conservative nonprofit First Liberty Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs people of faith, we look to the judiciary to protect our constitutional right to spread the gospel,\u201d said attorney Allyson Ho of the firm Gibson Dunn.<\/p>\n

The decision clears a path for Olivier to file a civil rights lawsuit, though it does not guarantee an eventual win. Local governments have said a ruling for Olivier could have wide repercussions by allowing a rush of new lawsuits against cities and towns.<\/p>\n

The city of Brandon has said the restrictions were not about religion and that Olivier had other legal avenues to challenge the law. The ordinance restricting Olivier to a designated \u201cprotest zone\u201d has already survived another lawsuit, city attorneys said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justices say prior conviction does not bar challenge to future enforcement of protest ordinance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-12019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12019"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18568,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12019\/revisions\/18568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12019"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=12019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}