On September 4, 2006, R.C. § 3767.30 as amended by H.B. 484 goes into effect. It states:
Every citizen may freely speak, write, and publish the person’s sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of the right, but no person shall picket or engage in other protest activities, nor shall any association or corporation cause picketing or other protest activities to occur, within three hundred feet of any residence, cemetery, funeral home, church, synagogue, or other establishment during or within one hour before or one hour after the conducting of an actual funeral or burial service at that place. No person shall picket or engage in other protest activities, nor shall any association or corporation cause picketing or other protest activities to occur, within three hundred feet of any funeral procession.
As used in this section, “other protest activities” means any action that is disruptive or undertaken to disrupt or disturb a funeral or burial service or a funeral procession.
On August 24th, the ACLU of Ohio filed suit challenging the constitutionality of R.C. § 3767.30 as amended by H.B. 484. Its provisions are ‘facially’ content-neutral, yet over-broad in their time, place and manner regulations of speech because they are not narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest and do not leave open alternative channels for communication. If this law is allowed to stand, every abortion clinic, animal testing lab, furrier and nuclear waste dump should set up shop next door to a busy urban funeral home because a funeral home running multiple funeral services during the day would effectively chill all speech within a football field sized radius of the funeral home for one hour before, during and one hour after funeral services take place.
Just imagine what a football field sized radius emanating from the first car through the last in a funeral procession would do. Since there is no requirement that a funeral procession give public notice of its intended path, no protestor or demonstrator can, with any reasonable certainty of complying with the law, engage in picketing or “other protest activities” because a protestor would have to know to stop their activities before having visual or any other confirmation that the car approaching is in a funeral procession.
Contact the Author: Marc Epstein
For more on this author, click here
