Supreme Court unanimously sides with street preacher in legal fight against Mississippi city
Decision says lawsuit challenging ordinance restricting protests can proceed
A Mississippi street preacher will get his day in court.
The preacher, Gabriel Olivier, is an independent evangelist who often appears on sidewalks outside major public events to share his religious views. Olivier was charged in 2019 with violating a Brandon, Miss., ordinance designed to keep protests and demonstrations away from an amphitheater in the city. Rather than engage in a court fight then, Oliver pleaded no contest and paid a $304 fine. But now he wants to evangelize in Brandon at an unapproved site again — so he went to federal court asking for a ruling that the city’s ordinance is unconstitutional so that he can evangelize without threat of prosecution.
The city said such a lawsuit isn’t allowed, and federal district and appeals courts agreed with the city based on a law known as 42 U. S. C. §1983, which gives people the right to challenge certain local and state government actions. But the Supreme Court today determined that the lower courts were wrong, so Olivier can challenge the ordinance.
The high court’s 9-0 decision, written by Justice Elena Kagan, did not give any indication whether the court has an opinion on the preacher’s constitutional claims. The decision said only that he is entitled to a hearing in federal courts.
The lower courts based their decisions in Olivier v. City of Brandon on the Supreme Court’s 1994 decision in Heck v. Humphrey. In that case, a man convicted of voluntary manslaughter for the death of his wife sought a federal review of his conviction under 42 U.S.C. §1983, but the Supreme Court said that particular law did not give him the ability to have his conviction reversed.
In today’s decision, the Supreme Court said that the logic used in Heck v. Humphrey did not apply because Olivier isn’t seeking to get his earlier conviction reversed: He wants only assurance that he won’t be prosecuted in the future if he preaches on the streets of Brandon in places where that isn’t allowed.
“Given that Olivier asked for only a forward-looking remedy — an injunction stopping officials from enforcing the city ordinance in the future — his suit can proceed, notwithstanding his prior conviction,” Kagan wrote.
Olivier claims that the city ordinance violates his right to free speech under the First Amendment.