ABOUT THE ARREST OF DON LEMON: IT’S NOT AS CLEAR-CUT AS YOU THINK
Of course you are upset by the arrest of Don Lemon. Especially after the Minnesota judges *refused* to issue an arrest warrant for him, so Bondi waited until he had left Minnesota, and arrested him in Los Angeles instead, while he was covering the Grammys.
And of course you believe that this is a 1st Amendment issue, and it is – but not in the way that you think.
Before I get further into this, Lemon is being charged with “conspiracy to deprive rights and interfering by force with someone’s First Amendment rights.” in other words the government is saying they are protecting the worshippers’ First Amendment rights. But most of you think this case is about something else and that is what I am going to address. 
First: I have watched the video on Don Lemon’s YouTube page where he interviews one of the organizers of the protest just before they enter the church. That organizer is Nekima Levy Armstrong. Armstrong is an attorney, and not just any attorney, but a *civil rights* attorney. So, she *definitely* knew the following:
Your First Amendment rights to protest apply to *PUBLIC property*. NOT private property. This is why people can’t protest inside supermarkets, or even ask you to sign a petition *inside* a supermarket – that is why they accost you just outside the supermarket, on the sidewalk, which *is* public property. Inside a supermarket is private property.
Guess what?
INSIDE A CHURCH IS PRIVATE PROPERTY!!
Here is what Armstrong – remember, a civil rights lawyer who *absolutely* knew the above – says while being interviewed by Lemon outside the church, just before having her group go into the *private* church. I pulled this right from the transcript of Lemon’s interview with her outside the church:
“This is Operation Pullup, more of a clandestine operation. We show up somewhere uh that is a key location. They don’t expect us to come there and then we disrupt business as usual. So that’s what we’re about to go do right now. We’ve had a lot of success with the times we have done Operation Pullup.”
So this was a planned breach of and trespass into private property.
Now, the *moment* they entered the church, they were on private property. Not covered by the First Amendment. And the moment that Don Lemon entered the church to film the protest, he too was on *private* property.
So, is Lemon covered by the First Amendment protection of freedom of the press? The law generally says “no”. The First Amendment is much more about “what you can say”, and, other than the “public spaces” thing, not about “where you can go”. Like it or not, it doesn’t give the press a pass to trespass into private property.
Did Lemon know this? Well, he is a seasoned journalist, so probably. Did he know that a church was private property? Maybe, maybe not, but for SURE Nekima Armstrong knows that and knows that her Operation Pullup is breaking the law; she of course is entitled to take that risk, and I don’t blame her for wanting to protest at a church where one of the pastors, David Eastwood, also works for ICE. But she blew it by entering the church instead of protesting outside – or, maybe she didn’t blow it, maybe her intent was to get arrested. Either way, she definitely knew that they were breaking a very well-defined law.
Lemon is being charged with “conspiracy to deprive rights and interfering by force with someone’s First Amendment rights.”
Truthfully the worshippers in the church have the stronger First Amendment claim.
Lemon’s lawyers may try to argue that a church, during services at which presumably anyone is welcome, is “quasi-public” (meaning that it is functionally equivalent to a public place). That may or may not work.
A lot, and I do mean a LOT, perhaps *most*, of the outcome of this case will depend on how the Court sees the facts of the case and how the law applies, or doesn’t apply, to the facts.
The *one* thing you can be sure of is that this case will almost certainly end up before the Supremes.
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