Judge denies injunction in Christian Arab group lawsuit

A federal judge from the Eastern District of Michigan denied a request for a temporary restraining order filed by an Arab Christian group that sought the right to pass out literature at a major gathering of Muslims in Dearborn. Pastor George Saieg, founder of the Arabic Christian Perspective, has attended the Dearborn Arab International Festival for the last five years, walking around to hand out literature and speaking to people about the Christian faith. But this year when he called to get the dates for the festival, which takes place this weekend, he was told that the group could only hand out literature in a specified area.

The Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center filed a federal lawsuit seeking a court order allowing the group to wander the festival grounds freely to pass out literature, but U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds denied that request. The case will still go forward as the plaintiffs seek a permanent injunction for future events, but for this weekend’s event they will have to comply with the rules.

We don’t have a copy of the ruling yet, but a clue to why the judge denied the injunction may be this statement from early news reports:

Festival organizer Fay Beydoun said the evangelical group was being offered a good spot in an area with a number of other religious, nonprofit and political groups.

“You have to pass right in front of it to get anywhere,” said Beydoun, executive director of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce…

The group sued Dearborn after police told the Rev. George Saieg members would need to restrict literature distribution to a designated table-and-booth section of the festival site.

The city said safely accommodating the 150,000 daily festival-goers requires limits on where people can leaflet. It said other Christian and Muslim groups already have tables and booths for distributing material at the festival.

City officials say anyone is free to have conversations — but not leaflet — on sidewalks within the festival’s barricades.

“It appears to be a legitimate governmental interest for crowd control and safety,” Edmunds said in denying the request. “The festival area is more akin to a fair than a normal city street.”

If the restriction had applied only to the Christian group, that would be a pretty clear First Amendment violation because it would be a restriction based on the viewpoint being expressed. But if, as this suggests, all outside groups that sought to hand out literature were given booths in a specific area in which to do so, that would be a viewpoint-neutral “time, place and manner” restriction that would be constitutional.

Despite that, the Thomas More Law Center says they will continue to pursue a permanent injunction in the case. On the group’s website, attorney Robert Muise said, “This case involves an important constitutional question regarding the government’s ability to prohibit peaceful speech activities. This preliminary ruling, while disappointing, will not affect the remainder of the case. We intend to pursue this as far as necessary.”