Two street preachers are evangelizing on the sidewalk outside of a casino when police approach and ask them to leave. The preachers refuse, citing their rights to free speech. The police counter by issuing their own citations for "obstructing a sidewalk."
In the face of obvious constitutional violations, the citations are dropped. The preachers file a lawsuit against the city, and the city eventually settles for a $12,000 award and a binding pledge to revamp its ordinances to reflect protection of free-speech rights.
It's not Las Vegas 2004, but Reno 1993: Donald Lundgren and Brian Bolander were preaching on the sidewalk outside of a casino, handing out flyers promoting their church services, when they were ticketed. (The lawsuit was settled four years later.)
Apparently, we're 11 years behind.
It was also in '93 that the MGM Grand became the first casino to claim legal dominion over sidewalks ringing its property. The construction of most new Strip casinos in the last several years has been accompanied by the widening of streets to accommodate traffic—usually at the behest of the casinos—and new sidewalks had to be constructed inside the casinos' property lines. Pedestrian walkways, historically considered public thoroughfares, were now regarded by the casinos as private property that they graciously let the public use—but only at the casinos' discretion.
That year, 5,000 Culinary Union members demonstrated at the opening of what was then a nonunion MGM Grand. Casino officials vowed to crack down on the pickets by asserting their rights to the sidewalks, and during a May 1994 protest, 500 picketers who stepped on the sidewalk were arrested for trespassing. (It was the union's suit over the sidewalks that led to the resolution of the labor dispute.) As an MGM Grand shop steward later told Congress, "A person could be out there leafleting pornography and be left alone, but union leafleting got you arrested."
(Space will not allow me to fully address the escort-service handbilling, which is its own sticky wicket. But suffice it to say that casinos and police don't make much distinction between that sort of canvassing and the types discussed here. Nor has the County Commission in trying to fashion laws cracking down on the escort-service handbilling.)
The nonunion Venetian followed the MGM Grand playbook when it faced its own Culinary protests as it was set to open in 1999. This time, despite entreaties by the Venetian to make trespassing arrests, Metro police went to District Attorney Stewart Bell, who told them that the sidewalks could not be privately controlled. And so the Venetian went to court to have its claim to the sidewalks upheld.
The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals saw it differently. In 2001, the court ruled that "the public streets and sidewalks located within the Las Vegas Resort District are public fora" and that "by dedicating the property to public use, the owner ... can no longer claim the authority to bar people from using the property because he or she disagrees with the content of their speech."
Then there's the Fremont Street Experience. Despite being inaugurated as Las Vegas' "town square" and designated a public park (essentially a gimmick to receive extra public funding), the FSE tried to ban solicitations, distribution of literature, demonstrations—any kind of speech beyond talking to your companion as you hop from casino to casino. The courts found that unconstitutional, too, but not before FSE security clamped down on anti-nuclear activists and police-brutality pamphleteers, to say nothing of the medical-marijuana ballot petitioners who were detained by Metro and threatened with arrest if they returned.
These rulings should have settled things, yet people who engage in speech that detracts from casinogoing, along the Strip and the FSE, are still bullied by casino security and Metro.
In the summer of 2001, homeless advocates demonstrating outside of the MGM Grand for industry funding for shelters were initially told by casino security to stop handing out fliers and were eventually herded from the high-traffic Las Vegas Boulevard frontage to the less-trod Tropicana Avenue. A later pilgrimage to the Experience was met by FSE security, who informed them that their leafletting is prohibited—despite getting a green light in advance from FSE officials.
In January 2002, antiwar student activists handing out fliers in front of the Boardwalk Casino were met by casino security, who threatened to handcuff and remove them from the sidewalk—and, according to some reports, said they'd do the same to the attorney who came to their defense. (In this case, it was Metro who backed security off.)
Culminating in the street-preacher shenanigans earlier this month. Pastor Tom Griner was merely preaching outside Bellagio when he was cited for obstructing the sidewalk. Undersheriff Doug Gillespie explained to the Review-Journal that pamphleteers, practically by their very nature, "deny others passage along a public right of way." (The sidewalk in front of Bellagio is about 25 feet wide.) A week later, on the Venetian sidewalk, Griner and fellow preacher Jim Webber faced hostile casino security and were told by Metro officers: "This is basically their house ... for any reason at all, they want to evict someone out of their house, they can do that."
In many cases, the only reason the demonstrations were left alone was the cavalry-like appearance of Allen Lichtenstein and Gary Peck of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada. It's sad when the fate of the rule of law relies on the presence of one or two people to explain the rules not just to private security, but to the police.
According to the R-J, Metro officers working the Strip will soon distribute pamphlets to demonstrators that explain their rights.
Shouldn't that be the other way around?
Jeremy Parker writes about politics biweekly. His website is lasvegasweblog.blogspot.com.