By John Fritze

(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Friday revived a First Amendment lawsuit from a street preacher who used a loudspeaker to call people “whores,” “Jezebels” and “sissies” as they tried to enter an amphitheater to attend concerts in a suburban Mississippi community.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote the opinion for a unanimous court.

The issue for the court was not the constitutionality of the protest-control ordinance enacted by the city of Brandon, located outside Jackson, Mississippi. Rather, the question for the justices was whether sidewalk preacher Gabriel Olivier could file a civil suit challenging the ordinance even though he had already been convicted of violating it.

A 1994 Supreme Court precedent, Heck v. Humphrey, bars people convicted of a crime from using civil lawsuits to effectively reverse their convictions. Because Olivier had previously been convicted of violating Brandon’s ordinance, lower courts, including the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, concluded that his civil lawsuit challenging the city’s rule could not move forward.

The December oral argument turned almost entirely on how to interpret the Heck precedent,?which was written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. That decision was intended to block people convicted of a crime from filing a civil suit against police or other officials that would, if successful, effectively let them undermine their conviction. If a court reviewing that civil suit found an underlying law unconstitutional, then people guilty of violating it would almost certainly seek to toss their conviction and punishment.

But Olivier said he would not do so – that he only wanted to block future enforcement of the ordinance.

Though the case is technical, the court’s decision could have broad implications for similar ordinances across the country. Local governments claimed that Olivier’s position would create new legal challenges to parade permitting requirements, zoning rules for adult businesses and regulations around?homeless encampments.

Olivier traveled to Brandon several times in 2018 and 2019 to share his faith on sidewalks near the city’s amphitheater. In 2019, the city passed an ordinance requiring protesters to gather in a designated area about 265 feet away. It banned loudspeakers that could be heard more than 100 feet away and required signs – regardless of their message – to be handheld.

The city described the protests as chaotic. Olivier yelled at concertgoers – using words like “fornicator” and “drunkards” – as they entered the amphitheater. The group sometimes held large signs depicting aborted fetuses, according to court records. Concertgoers would walk into traffic to avoid the group. Police would have to intervene to prevent fights between the group and attendees, the city said.

In 2021, as concertgoers arrived to hear country music artist Lee Brice perform, police advised Olivier and his group to move to the designated area. Olivier declined, according to court records, and was arrested for violating the ordinance. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to a fine and a year’s unsupervised probation.

The conservative 6-3 Supreme Court has repeatedly sided with religious claims in recent years, although Olivier’s appeal to the Supreme Court did not directly deal with the First Amendment. There has also been a thorny debate percolating over the extent to which Americans may sue officials under a civil rights law Olivier is relying on for his case, a dispute that came into sharper view in an unrelated case last year.

Olivier was represented in part by First Liberty Institute, a group that has brought?several successful religious appeals?to the Supreme Court in recent years.

The-CNN-Wire
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