CHICAGO (CN) — An LGBTQ rights advocacy group sued Chicago on Thursday, in hopes that a federal court will overturn the city's repeated denial of its application to protest outside the Democratic National Convention this summer.
The city cited traffic impediment concerns and a lack of police to monitor the group's protest when it first denied the application in January and again on appeal in February. But the group itself, called Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws, argued in its complaint that those explanations didn't sufficiently justify stifling free expression.
"The defendants’ denial of Bodies Outside’s permit is only one in a series of actions they have taken to keep protesters away from the Convention and Democratic delegates," Bodies Outside wrote.
Bodies Outside also named Chicago Transportation Commissioner Tom Carney and Police Superintendent Larry Snelling as defendants.
Bodies Outside is only one of multiple civil rights and social justice advocacy groups who have had their DNC protest permit applications denied by the city since the start of the year — others include the Poor People's Campaign, the March on the DNC Coalition and the Students for a Democratic Society at University of Illinois - Chicago. The city's letters of denial to each of these groups are nearly identical, each citing the same traffic and policing concerns.
At the same time, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson's administration and the Chicago Police Department have taken steps to beef up security plans around the convention taking place Aug. 19 to 22.
In April, the city council passed an ordinance sponsored by the mayor that calls for the establishment of a "security footprint" around the convention. The boundaries of this security footprint have yet to be finalized, but within it the ordinance calls for a broad ban on "any vehicle, cart or float," save for those used by government employees.
The ordinance also bans firearms, fireworks and ammunition, alongside a slew of more mundane items: drones, laptops, selfie sticks, "large bags," bicycles, folding chairs, balloons, coolers, metal-tipped umbrellas, tents, tobacco products, "pointed objects" and any other items the police superintendent deems a potential safety hazard.
In March, Snelling said police at the convention would implement lessons learned from the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and the 2012 NATO summit, which also drew mass left-wing protests in the city.
The convention places Johnson, a former labor and Black community organizer, in an awkward position. Earlier this year he assured protestors his administration would honor their free speech rights, saying the liberation of Black people from racist systems was intrinsically tied to "large-scale protest." But he also faces pressure from local, state and national Democratic officials to make sure the convention runs smoothly.
His office did not respond to a request for comment.
Bodies Outside claims the city's denials — and Johnson's ordinance — constitute violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Rebecca Glenberg, the senior supervising attorney for the Illinois ACLU and one of Bodies Outside's lawyers in the suit, said the city's permit denial relied on vague estimations of police availability.
The group's accusation of vagueness extended to the mayor's ordinance, which Bodies Outside hopes to block. The Fourteenth Amendment bars laws which are overly vague, both to the citizens subject to them and police charged with enforcing them, Glenberg said.
"The ordinance has both of those problems ... this ordinance has a lot of items that people just carry around normally," Glenberg said. "People who walk into that security zone do so at the risk that they're carrying something the superintendent finds hazardous. I mean, 'any pointed object?' A dull pencil is a pointed object."
Chicago did offer Bodies Outside an alternative marching route than the one they wished to take, but that route didn't pass by the downtown hotels where convention delegates will be staying. This, Glenberg said, goes beyond the limitations on free speech the city is legally allowed to impose in the name of public safety.
"You're not supposed to substantially suppress more speech than is legally required," she said.
Like other organizations, Bodies Outside said Thursday that it plans to protest the DNC regardless of whether or not it ultimately wins its permit. Left-wing groups like Bodies Outside have expressed frustration with the Democratic Party over the course of Joe Biden's term on a number of domestic and foreign policy issues.
Groups like Students for a Democratic Society oppose the U.S.' continued support for Israel, despite accusations that is an apartheid state and mounting evidence its military has committed war crimes in Gaza. Bodies Outside, meanwhile, accuses Democrats of failing to protect LGBTQ rights and abortion access nationwide.
“We want to gather together to demand action to dismantle the systems of oppression that deny LGTBQAIP+ individuals," said Kristi Keorkunian, a Bodies Outside member and a named plaintiff in the suit, in a prepared statement. "We are demanding unwavering support and solidarity from elected officials not only when it is politically expedient, but every single day.”
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