Petition for the Charleston City Council to Repeal its Ordinance Against First Amendment Demonstrations
Charleston City Council
On January 29th, 2025, a peaceful gathering in Marion Square to protest mass ICE arrests was met with police violence and the arrests of seven protesters.
In October 2024, a peaceful pro-Palestine demonstration resulted in at least two protesters being arrested and criminally charged. After over one year of legal struggles and no trial, those charges were finally dismissed.
Charleston law enforcement can make these unconstitutional arrests because of our so-called “First Amendment Ordinance.” This ordinance, passed at an emergency city council meeting in July 2021, requires all public gatherings of 25 or more people to have a permit, approved by the Chief of police, or be within 48 hours of “breaking news.” Its additional limitations also mean that there are few places within city limits where groups can legally gather in public to express their “views or grievances,” even with a permit.
The ordinance was a response to massive demonstrations in Charleston after the January 2021 murder of Jamal Sutherland, a black man incarcerated at Al Cannon Detention Center, and on the heels of historic nationwide unrest in summer 2020 against the police murder of George Floyd.
Passage of the ordinance occurred with no public comment allowed, despite objections from multiple city council members present at the emergency meeting. It joined hundreds of similar new local ordinances against public protest and free speech around the country. Since then, even less restrictive ordinances than Charleston’s have been found unconstitutional.
Our city’s response to an unprecedented number of people exercising their first amendment rights to speak out against police violence was ironically to further empower police to arrest us when exercising our first amendment rights.
After being used to repress free speech and intimidate voices in defense of black lives, Palestinian lives, and now immigrant lives, it’s clear that the First Amendment Ordinance will be broadly applied to limit and criminalize protest and political dissent.
Regardless of political beliefs, we should all be greatly concerned by our local governments taking away our fundamental rights. As our governments trend toward authoritarian rule, whether it be over your bodily autonomy, your freedom of conscience, or the justice system, remember that our right to free speech exists exactly to counteract this.
In light of this stifling of our constitutional rights, we demand that the City of Charleston revoke this repressive and unconstitutional ordinance and protect – not criminalize – free speech in Charleston.
Sponsored by
To:
Charleston City Council
From:
[Your Name]
We decry the mass arrests carried out on January 29th in response to a peaceful and spontaneous gathering in Marion Square to protest President Trump’s mass deportation agenda. This continues a pattern of politically motivated repression against free speech demonstrations in Charleston, including when several people were criminally charged for participation in a peaceful Pro-Palestine demonstration in October 2024.
We urge you to repeal the repressive and likely unconstitutional 1st Amendment Demonstration ordinance immediately.
The so-called “1st Amendment Demonstration” ordinance was passed in July 2021 in an emergency meeting of the council with no public comment allowed. Multiple council members objected to the undemocratic process the City Council used at the time.
It was clearly passed in response to the historic uprisings against the police murder of Black people, particularly Jamal Sutherland (killed while incarcerated at Al Cannon Detention Center) and George Floyd (murdered by Minneapolis police); and was part of a wave of hundreds of similarly repressive local ordinances passed around the country.
In other words, our City responded to an unprecedented number of people decrying police violence by increasing the powers of the police to repress speech and criminalize public gatherings. But this repression of speech threatens all of us, regardless of our political beliefs.
We urge the City of Charleston to revoke this repressive and unconstitutional ordinance, and protect – not criminalize – free speech in Charleston.