Don’t be misled by the usual suspects’ disingenuous blather about “free speech.” HB 737 by Republican state Rep. Kellee Dickerson doesn’t inhibit that; rather, it promotes free expression.
The bill would prohibit picketing near a person’s residence which interferes with, disrupts, threatens to disrupt, or harasses the individual's right to control, use, or enjoy his residence, and has passed the Louisiana House of Representatives. Leftist critics have bemoaned its progress, calling its potential application overbroad by not allowing protesting on the street or right-of-way and potentially an unconstitutional restriction on free speech and assembly.
As to constitutionality, that’s a moot point, because Louisiana already has on its books a very similar law. R.S. 14:401, the law for decades, prohibits demonstrations near residences of judges, jurors, trial witnesses, or court officers, and it’s never faced a challenge. Legally, the judiciary recognizes that people engaged in official business of the state have a right when not performing official business not to have their lives disrupted at a nonpublic place.
Because those kinds of demonstrations occur not for reasons of expressing an opinion nor involve gathering for right of redress. Those just as easily can occur at the place where democratic debate occurs, or in large public spaces where the presence of multiple people assembling peaceably doesn’t impede nonparticipants from enjoying substantially the same space. The message still is delivered to policy-makers.
No, the point of protests at residences designed to disturb the lifestyles of public officials is to intimidate, as the existing Louisiana law regarding the judiciary recognizes. Even threaten, such as a thwarted attempt on the life of Supreme Court Assoc. Justice Brett Kavanaugh a couple of years ago, the stage for which was set by extended protests outside of his house and those of other justices by pro-abortion fanatics who believed those judges wished to overturn a previous decision on abortion regulation.
Understand that the political left wants to be able to intimidate who it sees as its opponents. When analyzed using logic and fact, liberalism fails to persuade as to correctness of its view of the human condition particularly compared to conservatism, so leftist activists rely much more heavily on emotive appeals. Unable to win intellectual debates, over the decades it steadily has expanded to shouting down any expression with which it disagrees, deplatforming that, and performing cancel culture.
The intimidation strategy extends from this, its methodology trying to make all aspects of life so miserable to those who refuse to submit to its orthodoxy that they surrender the public square. In essence, it operates as a form of censorship, discouraging the articulation and enactment into law or policy the ideas it opposes either by keeping out of public service those who would challenge it or causing its opponents to keep quiet with their alternatives out of fear they will be targeted if they try to resist.
Concerns about the bill’s exact language, which technically deals with disturbing the peace, also are overblown, if not a thinly-disguised tactic to try to defeat it by irrelevant appeals. American judicial history and its basis in common law ensures that its narrow construction will keep its power to circumscribe behavior on a short leash.
Properly understood, HB 737 encourages free expression by preventing bullying of those who don’t subscribe to orthodoxy while it doesn’t affect free assembly that is designed to promote debate as part of the democratic process. Not only is it constitutional, it’s good policy, and the Legislature needs to pass it.
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