Lawsuit Charges Public Officials Violated Christian Activist's Free-Speech Righ

By Allie Martin
October 25, 2005

(AgapePress) - Officials in one Pennsylvania borough are being accused of violating the free-speech rights of a local Christian. The legal representative for a religious leader who was ejected from a public meeting after he tried to read from the Bible says his client is suing.

Last summer, Christian activist Michael Marcavage of the group Repent America attended a regularly scheduled meeting of the Lansdowne Borough Council. During the public discussion forum there, he attempted to speak about comments made by a homosexual council member.

However, when Marcavage tried to read a passage from the Bible, a council member told him he would not be allowed to do so because reading a biblical passage would be tantamount to hate speech. When the activist insisted on his right to read, the meeting was adjourned and he was forcibly removed and later criminally charged with disrupting a public meeting.

Ultimately, without the need even for a hearing, the Delaware County District Attorney's Office dismissed the criminal charges against Marcavage as being without merit. Ted Hoppe, an attorney for the Repent America leader, has filed a federal lawsuit against the Borough of Lansdowne on his behalf.

In addition to the complaint, Hoppe says he filed a Motion for a Preliminary Injunction seeking a temporary order so Marcavage can again attend Lansdowne Borough Council meetings. "This is important," the attorney notes, "because people need to have the right to be able to go to these borough meetings or municipal meetings and address their elected officials."

Citizens have a right, Hoppe continues, to talk with their community political leaders and "raise these issues without the fear that they're going to be arrested -- without the fear that they're going to be vilified and called names in public, simply because the officials don't like them."

Marcavage's lawyer feels that people's access to publicly elected officials and freedom to address those officials about areas of concern should be considered constitutionally sacrosanct. "Those are things that are at the heart of our First Amendment right to free speech," he says.

It is wrong, Hoppe contends, "for a politician to get up there and say, 'I just don't like what you're saying; it bothers my sensibilities, so I'm not going to listen to it.' Well, that's part of what being a politician is all about. You have to listen to people who you agree with and people you don't agree with."

Even if certain issues under discussion make some council members uncomfortable, the attorney asserts, "They do not have the right to restrict a citizens speech simply because they don't like what they are saying."

Hoppe says the lawsuit filed on his client's behalf asks the court to declare that Marcavage and the other Borough of Lansdowne citizens "have the right to speak during the open comment period of the Borough Council meeting without having their speech censored and without being subjected to the threat of arrest."