The City of Lafayette makes every effort to balance free speech and association rights with the rights of community members to enjoy peaceful and safe public spaces.
Those who are gathering to protest topics pertaining to the education of students at Lafayette Elementary School are exercising their right to freely assemble and engage in free speech in a public forum. Accordingly, the state and federal constitutions limit the City’s ability to regulate these protests:
- The City may not establish a blanket prohibition to bar these individuals from gathering, or from engaging in free speech.
- The City may impose reasonable restrictions on the time, place, and manner of the gathering and the speech, so long as these restrictions are (1) content-neutral, (2) narrowly tailored to serve the City’s significant interest in ensuring the safety and convenience of the community members also using this public forum area, and (3) leave open alternative channels for the message to be communicated. These time, place, and manner restrictions could not be used to bar protests from occurring during school pick-up and drop-off or to relocate protests away from the school.
- However, the City will take steps to ensure that all pedestrians and vehicles are allowed safe passage through the area, in accordance with traffic, pedestrian, and ADA regulations.
- In addition, signs on public property are prohibited without an encroachment permit. A sign which causes an unsafe condition by interfering with the vision of a motorist or which interferes with the safe and convenient passage of pedestrians is also prohibited. Mobile signs, which is a sign attached to, leaning against, or suspended from a vehicle, other than a bumper sticker are also prohibited.
- Lastly, the City will take all appropriate action against conduct or speech that rises to the level of inciting violence or is otherwise outside the protections of the First Amendment, as defined by U.S. Supreme Court case law.
