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Tuesday, July 31, 2012
By Michael Nichols
Categories: Michael J. Nichols
The Michigan Supreme Court struck down an ordinance at Michigan State University that prohibited “disruption” of “normal activity,” finding that the ordinance violates the First Amendment. “The ruling by the high court takes away a lot of subjective arrest authority for law enforcement on the MSU campus,” says East Lansing attorney Mike Nichols. Nichols hailed the ruling on Friday, July 27th as a victory for the first amendment. “Circuit Judge Paula Manderfield very wisely and bravely struck down the ordinance because the wording was so ambiguous before the court of appeals reversed her,” said Nichols.
After receiving a parking ticket in 2009 that he disagreed with, Jared Rapp approached an MSU parking enforcement employee to determine if he was the one who wrote the ticket. The employee in question considered Mr. Rapp’s actions to be aggressive. Following the standard MSU employee procedure, the employee got into his service vehicle and called MSU Police. While waiting for police to arrive, Rapp was taking pictures of the employee with his camera phone. The police arrived and Rapp was subsequently charged with an MSU Ordinance punishable by a maximum of 90 days in jail and/or a $500 fine.
The ordinance, 15.05 Disruption or molestation of persons, firms or agencies, was ruled unconstitutional on its face for being too broad and prohibiting too much free speech. The ordinance, as ruled on by the Court, states “no person shall disrupt the normal activity or molest the property of any person, firm or agency while that person, form or agency is carrying out service, activity or agreement for or with the University.” The Court held that it was too broad because it not only included protected speech, but further stated that even a student attending classes could be seen as carrying out an activity with the university and it gave police too much discretion to arrest people for behavior that could just be annoying.
Nichols added: “for Mr. Rapp, what is probably the most important is that he can wipe his record clean and have so many more doors open for him. We see MSU students who get charged with crimes so frequently and the goal in our cases is to keep the clients criminal record clean.”
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