A lawsuit filed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 2001 against Taylorsville, Utah, police is headed back to the U.S. District Court in Utah after an appeals court reversed a district court verdict against the animal rights groups.
The lawsuit stems from a Jan. 20, 1999 protest that PETA organized at Eisenhower Junior High School in Taylorsville, Utah (but remember, PETA doesn’t target children according to Ingrid Newkirk).
Taylorsville police had arrested two PETA protestors on Jan. 6 for attempting to remove a McDonald’s banner that was flying on the school flagpole. At the Jan. 20 protest, police told protestors they had two choices — either disburse or face arrest.
PETA filed suit a week later, and in June 2001 the U.S. District Court agreed with police and the school that PETA’s protestors violated a state law making it illegal to disrupt school.
In reversing that decision, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law applied only to colleges, not to junior high schools. PETA will be allowed to ask for damages, but will be barred from challenging the law itself since the appellate court ruled “there is no credible threat of prosecution under the statute for any future protests at Eisenhower.”
The appellate court disagreed with PETA’s contention that since its protest was timed to coincide with the end of the school day that its activity was not disruptive, but it agreed with PETA that the school and police had failed to provide any evidence that the protest disrupted the school’s activities, noting that the heavy presence of several police squad cars and a helicopter was at least as distracting as the PETA protest.
Source:
Appeals court backs animal activists in protest. Matt Canham, The Salt Lake Tribune, August 8, 2002.