Political Activism

[BmorePat87]

(03-11-2017, 12:49 AM)bfine32 Wrote: Fair response and who is right or wrong aside; I would say it is n interesting issue; as many agree that Freedom to Assemble (FTA) has been consumed with Freedom of Speech. I did read that SCOTUS has not ruling on a FTA in over 30 years.
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One case I did review was a case from over 100 years ago where SCOTUS declared that a civilian group could not deny another civilian group the FTA. I must admit I cannot find it now but the case was concerning a person whose last name started with C (Italian sounding if I recall) and I would like to read it again. As I do believe we are not talking the same language. I think you are saying Civilians cannot restrict FTA and I an interpreting that by case study as civilians cannot legally restrict FTA but the can physically do so which is a violation.

Private citizens can commit a number of illegal actions that interfere with you assembling, they just cannot be the ones denying it. If I am making a speech in public and someone kidnaps me and gags me, I am physically unable to speak, but this action hasn't violated my freedom to speak. The reason is our First Amendment rights are our ability to express ourselves (via literal and symbolic speech, religion, assembly, petition, and press) without hindrance from the government. 

It may sound like semantics, but as someone who has taken business law classes, you know that the law is often very specific. 

I respect how strongly you feel about this, but we already have laws that would prevent a group from physically preventing another group from carrying out their demonstration. The government can't prevent a second group from lawfully assembling just because they out number the first group. Our expression isn't free from lawful reactions from other private citizens.