Ordinance Picks on Picketers of Private Homes

None by KCPW

(KCPW News) The Salt Lake City Council is considering banning activists from picketing within 100 feet of a person's home. Mayor Rocky Anderson - a civil rights attorney by trade - is recommending the ordinance on behalf of several researchers from the University of Utah's Animal Resource Center who are routinely picketed by animal rights activists.

"The main issue is that people felt really fearful and intimated from leaving their homes," says Mayor's spokesman Patrick Thronson. "So it rose beyond people just being a mere disturbance. It was something that actually felt like a threat."

Similar ordinances restricting picket lines at private residences have been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court and do not unduly restrict free speech rights, says Thronson.

Utah Primate Freedom Project Organizer Jasone Rose says the group may chant and hold signs while picketing, but does not threaten to harm the researchers they suspect of conducting experiments on animals.

"I don't feel any sympathy for someone who is unwilling to take any actions to publicly defend what they're doing, yet says they can't suffer any repercussions for doing so," says Rose. "And since this is the only medium that we're allowed - the only forum that we're left with - we're just fulfilling that."

The Utah Primate Freedom Project has tried for years without success to make the University of Utah release the names of employees who work at the Animal Resource Center. Attorneys for the U of U sent the City Council a memo last week strongly urging them to enact the ordinance on behalf of its researchers.

The City Council will consider the ordinance tonight at 7 p.m.

Click here to read the proposed ordinance and supporting material.

Email to a friendPosted in KCPW Newsroom. Copyright 2008 KCPW