After receiving a number of letters about the presence of military recruiters at city parks, the Seattle Parks Department has changed its policy and will begin posting notices when recruiters are scheduled to appear at Parks events.
According to an email from Seattle Parks Superintendent Tim Gallagher:
We received mail from several people asking Parks to take a variety of actions ranging from alerting parents when military representatives will be present at events for youth, to making parks “military-free zones.”
We are sensitive to the issue of opposition to military organizations. Limitations on free speech must be content-neutral in order to be legal. To make a distinction among park users, or parties to whom we rent rooms or issue permits, would be a violation of the rights of the military under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
However, whenever military representatives are expected at any Parks-sponsored event involving young people, we will note that on the event’s activities list.
Seattle Parks spokeswoman Dewey Potter says if military representatives are scheduled to appear at an event, Parks will post a notice on its website. “The law department advised us that do anything else would violate first amendment rights,” Potter says.
Potter says military recruiters aren’t currently scheduled to appear at any upcoming events.
But won’t that compromise the recruiter’s element of surprise?
Hopefully with this and the nudity freakout Parks has fulfilled its nonsense quota for the next couple years.
This does open up the tantalizing prospect of nude military recruiters.
The first amendment aspect of this is hard for me to follow.
Military members are free to say whatever they want, so long as they are out of uniform and don’t use their military titles when they speak or write. Then they are speaking for themselves.
When in uniform, they are only allowed to say what their superiors tell them to say, and the must shut up when told to shut up. But that is also protected speech? How is it that an arm of the government has the same free speech rights as the people?
And what about the government’s other rights, like freedom of religion? Does a branch of the DoD have the right to assemble or pray or petition the government? Is this making sense?
Is it weird that enjoining recruiters from appearing on public park property is a violation of freedom of speech, but if you’re actually in the military, your freedom of speech rights are heavily curtailed anyways?
@5
A little weird, but a necessary part of military discipline.
I’m no fan of recruiters, but they have to be allowed to do their job and say their bit. If you disagree, become a counter-recruiter and follow them around using this handy schedule.
Can’t we just restrict them to King County Parks, since we here in Seattle pay for both Seattle Parks and for King County Parks?
Sounds fair to me …
So if we follow the “allowed to recruit and promote as long as there’s notice” model, what other “recruiting” type services can you think of that might also be allowed on site? If people really don’t want this to happen, my suggestion would be to make formal requests from every recruitment organization possible to appear in the park the same day as the military.
Umm… guys? Context is king.
Speech protected for the citizenry from the power of government is free speech.
Speech protected for the government from the interests of the citizenry is propaganda and coercion.
Last time I checked, the US military was part of the government.
Lame call by the City Attorney, just phoning in a weak argument of convenience. This is not about the first amendment. The parks regulates commercial speech in its parks. This is similar, has nothing to do with the individual rights of citizens to speak their minds in public.
Now if the federal government threatened to withhold money from the City unless it allowed this activity, maybe I could understand. But this strikes me at a gutless move by the City so far.