Supreme Court rejects appeal on dissenters at presidential speeches

The president and his aides are entirely free to screen the audience for his public speeches and to remove those who may disagree with him, under a ruling the Supreme Court let stand Tuesday.

By a 7-2 vote, the justices turned down an appeal from a Colorado woman who was ejected from a speech by aides to then-President George W. Bush because her car had a bumper sticker that said “No More Blood for Oil.”

Meanwhile, the court agreed to hear an appeal from a jealous wife who was convicted under a federal anti-terrorism law after she tried to poison her husband’s mistress. Carol Bond, a lab technician from Pennsylvania, tried 24 times to poison the woman who was pregnant with her husband’s child, leaving deadly chemicals on her mailbox and the door handles of her home and car.

The woman was not seriously injured, but Bond was sentenced to six years in prison. In Bond vs. U.S., she argues that she was charged under the wrong law.

The justices also said they would decide whether the Constitution restricted the questioning of children at school when allegations of sexual abuse arise. Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a social worker and a police officer needed a search warrant before they took a child out of class for questioning.

Lawyers from 27 states urged the high court to overturn the ruling as wrong-headed and impractical. The case of Camreta vs. Greene will be heard early next year.

Only Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor voted to hear the case of the Colorado woman, saying the Constitution does not permit public officials to punish people simply “for holding discordant views.”

“Official reprisal for protected speech offends the Constitution,” Ginsburg said in her two-page dissent, “because it threatens to inhibit exercise of the protected right.”

Leslie Weise, a clean energy consultant, had obtained a ticket to hear Bush speak in Denver about Social Security in 2005. She and Alex Young arrived together and entered the hall where the president was to speak.

But aides were alerted about the bumper sticker on their car, and they were escorted out of the hall.

Bush White House aides have been sued in several cases for excluding suspected dissidents and critics from the president’s public appearances. In responses to the suits, aides said they wanted to prevent critics from disrupting his speeches.

But there was no allegation that Weise or Young had any intent to disrupt Bush’s talk. They filed suit against Michael Casper and another official who made the decision to remove them. Secret Service agents revealed that the bumper sticker was the basis for excluding them from the meeting hall.

A federal judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver, in a 2-1 decision, rejected the claim and held that excluding the pair did not violate the 1st Amendment. “President Bush had the right, at his own speech, to ensure that only his message was conveyed,” wrote Judge Wiley Daniel in dismissing the suit.

Weise appealed to the Supreme Court with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union and argued that when government officials were “speaking at events that are open to the public and paid for by the taxpayers,” they may not screen out people based solely on their views.

They acknowledged that the president or other elected officials may screen the audience when they are speaking at partisan political gatherings or at private gatherings.

The justices, without comment, turned down the appeal in Weise vs. Casper.

david.savage@latimes.com