Court Rules Gays Can Be Kept Out of Boston Parade

The Supreme Court on Monday declared that the private organizers of an annual city parade may exclude gay marchers, ruling unanimously that the parade sponsors’ right to free speech outweighs state civil rights laws.

“Real parades are public dramas [in which] the marchers are making some sort of collective point,” wrote Justice David H. Souter. The parade’s participants have a right not only to express their own views but also “to exclude a message [they] did not like,” he added.

While the ruling is a victory for the war veterans who run Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade and a defeat for a local group of gays and lesbians who want to march in it, the high court made clear that it was not endorsing an anti-gay message.

“Our holding today rests not on any particular view about the [veterans’] message but on the nation’s commitment to protect freedom of speech,” Souter wrote. For example, the court’s ruling would mean sponsors of an annual gay pride parade would not have to include the views of their opponents.

In recent years, traditional parades in New York and Boston have been torn by disputes over whether gays, abortion rights advocates and others could march along and proclaim their message to thousands of bystanders.

In 1993, the gay and lesbian group in Boston filed suit against parade leader John J. (Wacko) Hurley and the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council, alleging that their exclusion of gay marchers violated the state civil rights law.

A state judge agreed and proclaimed that “the proper celebration [of this traditional parade] requires diversity and inclusiveness.” Massachusetts civil rights law forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation in places of “public accommodation,” such as hotels and restaurants, and the judge concluded that “an open recreational event” on the city streets is a “place of public accommodation.”

Based on that reasoning, the judge and the state supreme court ruled that gays had a right to march in the annual parade.

Justice Souter, calling the state court’s view “peculiar,” pointed to a long line of Supreme Court cases which have said that parades and marches are “a form of expression . . . within the sphere of conduct protected by the First Amendment.”

While in one sense the free speech clause protects a diversity of viewpoints, the government cannot by law compel anyone--whether a parade organizer, a political candidate or a newspaper editor--to express a particular message, he said in his opinion in Hurley vs. Irish-American Gay Group, 94-749.

Lawyers for the veterans, joined by advocates for traditional values, applauded the ruling.

“This is a First Amendment victory for everyone, including gay pride marchers,” said Chester Darling, the Boston lawyer for the veterans.

The ruling “proclaims that government should not be in the business of deciding whether private speech is proper or politically correct,” said Steven T. McFarland, attorney for the Christian Legal Society.

Even gay-rights advocates found something to like in the decision.

“This was a First Amendment decision that didn’t have much to say about gay rights. What it does say is actually positive for us,” said Beatrice Dohrn, legal director for the Lambda Legal Defense Fund in New York.

Because the court’s parade opinion highlights free-speech rights, she said, it could bolster the pending gay-rights challenge to the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. That legal challenge to the Administration’s controversial policy is based in part on the argument that a gay military person has the free-speech right to proclaim his or her sexual orientation.

In other actions, the court:

* Refused to hear the first free-speech challenge to the federal law passed last year to protect abortion clinics from violence and disruption (Woodall vs. Reno, 94-1417). But the appeal dismissed Monday is not a ruling on the issue. Indeed, the protester who filed the suit was not even charged with violating the federal statute.

Other legal challenges are pending in the lower courts and may yet win a hearing. For example, some abortion foes say that Congress does not have the constitutional authority to get involved in local disputes at abortion clinics.

* Let stand a ruling that weakens the federal laws against age discrimination. A federal appeals court in Chicago ruled that an employment policy which closes off jobs to older, higher-salaried workers is not age discrimination.

The case arose when the Chicago public schools decided to set the salaries for vacant jobs at a lower level to save money. A drama teacher’s job was to pay only $28,000, and a teacher with 30 years of experience was told he could not apply because of his $46,000 salary.

While the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission contended that this policy discriminated against older employees, the appeals court disagreed and said that “neutral” policies which “adversely” affect older workers are not illegal. The justices refused to hear the agency’s appeal on behalf of the teacher in EEOC vs. Parker School, 94-1558.

* Refused to hear an industry’s challenge to a Chicago anti-graffiti ordinance that bans the sale of spray paint (National Paint and Coating Assn. vs Chicago, 94-1739). Industry officials said that the city’s ban could cost it $6 million in sales and claimed that it violates the Constitution’s protection for interstate commerce. But a federal appeals court disagreed and upheld the law.

* Refused to order the government to admit Haitian refugee children under the same terms as Cuban children (Haitian Refugee Center vs. Christopher, 94-1611). Lawyers for Haitians said that this amounts to unconstitutional discrimination, but the lower courts said that the refugees are not citizens and that the law gives the attorney general wide authority to set immigration policies.