LOS ANGELES, CA – Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass, and Chief of Police Jim McDonnell on behalf of Christian organizers for Mayday USA, a grassroots revival event. The city unconstitutionally denied the organizers a permit to peacefully assemble even though a few days later the city permitted the LA Pride Parade in the same location.
Liberty Counsel represents several lead Mayday organizers, such as Jenny Donnelly, founder and president of Her Voice Movement, Inc., lead organizers Robert Donnelly, Ross Johnston, and Russell Johnson, lead pastor of The Pursuit, a Christian church in Washington.
The Mayday USA organizers requested access to Hollywood Boulevard, a traditional public forum, for a May 31 event to worship, and to speak against abortion, pornography, and human trafficking. City officials refused to grant the permit and imposed lengthy administrative hurdles and complicated permitting requirements. Yet, the city permitted the opposite viewpoints on the same street, such as the 55th Annual LA Pride Parade, the Thai New Year Songkran Festival, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protests.
The plaintiffs seek an injunction restraining the city from continuing its unlawful permitting process that violates the rights to free speech, religious exercise, and equal protection, as well as granting them equal access in a manner similar to non-religious organizations.
Throughout the month of May, the organizers planned Mayday revival events in five major U.S. cities—New York, Miami, Houston, Seattle, and Los Angeles. The five-city tour was a “Mayday” call for a nationwide Christian revival and to awaken America’s parents and politicians to the Gospel, and the need to protect children, families, and the nation’s religious freedoms. The events were permitted and held in the first four cities, though the City of Seattle conspicuously denied organizers their location of choice and only granted it to be held in a predominantly LGBTQ neighborhood. During the event, gender-confused and antifa rioters dressed in black and wearing face masks assaulted the Christians in attendance where police eventually had to shut the event down.
According to the lawsuit, city officials gave organizers “pushback” on the Mayday permit request because of the agitators in Seattle. Ironically, defendant Mayor Bass in an official statement encouraged protests regarding ICE activity and permitted those events—even when they turned violent. Yet, Mayday organizers were denied their request to peacefully exercise their constitutional rights to speech, expression, and religion on Hollywood Boulevard, a home to frequent and reoccurring parades, and other constitutionally protected expressive activity from varying viewpoints.
The lawsuit contends the city imposed many administrative requirements and “difficulties” on the Mayday event—none of which are codified in the city’s municipal code. The unconstitutional roadblocks included:
- Organizers needed to conduct a petition of Hollywood Boulevard’s business owners and vendors to ensure at least 51 percent approved of Mayday’s expressive activity and speech.
- Requirements that organizers restructure its event without the use of a stage and move it away from Hollywood Boulevard despite allowing LA Pride to have a stage to espouse opposite viewpoints.
- The city’s permitting scheme failed to follow reasonable time limits where Mayday’s permit application decision was delayed until the last minute and ultimately denied.
The city informed Mayday organizers that their permit application was denied because it could not permit anything related to “freedom of speech” or “protests,” states the lawsuit.
Quoting Liberty Counsel’s 9-0 U.S. Supreme Court win in Shurtleff v. City of Boston, the lawsuit reads, “When the government does not speak for itself, it may not exclude speech based on ‘religious viewpoint;’ doing so ‘constitutes impermissible viewpoint discrimination.’”
By denying Mayday’s permit because if its “religious viewpoint” while allowing LA Pride to speak on Hollywood Boulevard about similar topics from a different viewpoint, Los Angeles’ permitting scheme favored nonreligious value systems more favorably than religious ones—a clearly discriminatory and unconstitutional censoring of religious expression, concluded Liberty Counsel.
Mayday USA is inspired by a grassroots movement in Peru called “#DontMessWithOurKids.” Peruvian parents took to the streets, not in violence, but in prayer and worship, and took a stand against gender ideology and abortion. The movement helped change the government’s leadership, and as a result, gender confusion is now officially classified as a mental illness in Peru, and life is defined as beginning at conception.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “The City of Los Angeles may not pick and choose which groups are allowed First Amendment rights of free expression or religious freedom. The Constitution is clear that religious freedom is inalienable. Liberty Counsel is defending these ministries because silencing the peaceful public expression of Christian viewpoints cannot be tolerated. The city’s unconstitutional permitting scheme cannot withstand First Amendment scrutiny and causes irreparable harm to religious liberty. Los Angeles city officials must be held accountable.”
About Liberty Counsel
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