Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorneys are representing members of the Frederick Douglass Foundation and Students for Life of America after Washington, D.C., barred members of the groups permission from writing a pro-life message on a city street with washable chalk. D.C. police arrested members of the two pro-life groups when they started to chalk messages on the sidewalk. The officers prevented the pro-life groups from chalking the messages right after the city permitted other messages to be painted on another street.
ADF filed its opening brief in The Frederick Douglass Foundation v. District of Columbia July 13.
The Frederick Douglass Foundation is a national education and public policy organization with local U.S. chapters advocating free market and limited government ideas. Students for Life is one of the leading pro-life advocacy organizations in the world.
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Police prohibited the pro-life groups’ members from chalking “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” in washable chalk on a public sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood in August 2020. Officers arrested two pro-life advocates attempting to write the message for defacement of public property.
During that summer and fall, protestors spray-painted city streets and sidewalks in the Nation’s Capital with Black Lives Matter messages. These instances included protesters spray-painting “I can’t breathe” in front of the Washington D.C. Chamber of Commerce, according to ADF, and painting “= Defund the Police” to the “Black Lives Matter” mural the city had commissioned. None of those protesters were arrested, ADF said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit had reinstated the First Amendment claims of the two pro-life organizations and sent the case back to the district court in August 2023. Following discovery in the case, the district court ruled again for the city, granting its petition for summary judgment.
ADF is asking U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to reverse the district court’s ruling and allow a jury to decide the case.
The legal non-profit’s vice president of appellate advocacy commented on the issue of selective enforcement in the case.
“Washington officials can’t censor messages they disagree with. The right to free speech is for everyone,” said ADF Senior Counsel John Bursch. “As this court has already held, in this very case, the ‘First Amendment prohibits the government from favoring some speakers over others’ in law enforcement.”
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“The Frederick Douglass Foundation and Students for Life should be able to exercise their constitutionally protected freedom to peacefully share their views the same as anyone else,” Bursch said. “We’re urging the court to once again protect every American’s right to speak messages on important cultural and political issues.”
Leaders from both pro-life groups weighed in as well on the unequal application of law.
“The government has no business deciding which political viewpoints get a free pass and which get handcuffs,” said Frederick Douglass Foundation’s Chairman Troy Rolling. “Equal justice means applying the law equally, not rewarding favored speech while punishing dissenting voices. If the First Amendment means anything, it means government cannot silence Americans because it disagrees with what they have to say.”
“Pro-abortion leaders in the nation’s capital must not be allowed to violate the U.S. Constitution by criminalizing pro-life speech they don’t like, and we will come back to court in Washington D.C. for as many times as it takes to protect the rights of Americans who care about babies in the womb,” said Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins. “Blocking pro-life students from peacefully chalking Black Preborn Lives Matter is viewpoint discrimination.”
“It’s striking that one of the few ways for protestors to get the attention of D.C. officials is not by violence or vandalism, but by voicing love and concern for the preborn with chalk,” Hawkins added.
