Court Upholds Arrests of 2 Protesters at 2004 Convention

By VIVIAN YEE

A federal appeals court ruling has affirmed a lower court decision upholding the arrest of two protesters who refused to leave a no-demonstration zone across from Madison Square Garden during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York.

Calling the challenge of providing security for the crowded area around the Garden “altogether extraordinary,” the court ruled that the city did not violate the First Amendment by restricting the protesters to a demonstration zone on Eighth Avenue.

The Police Department's policy balanced protesters' needs with those of pedestrians and convention attendees, and “was narrowly tailored to address the threats to sidewalk congestion and security created by an event the size and spectacle of a national convention in Midtown Manhattan,” Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs wrote in the decision issued on Thursday.

City officials hailed the decision as supporting the Police Department's authority to manage major events.

“The ruling recognizes the extraordinary challenges the N.Y.P.D. faced in effectively policing a massive event in a venue like New York City, with its millions of residents, visitors and workers,” said Drake A. Colley, senior counsel at the New York City Law Department.

But this case was something of an exception among the more than 100 civil liberties cases brought against the city in the wake of the convention, when about 1,800 people were arrested. Although 55 cases have been settled or withdrawn, a federal court in Manhattan is still deciding about 50 cases that challenge the police's use of mass arrests, lengthy detentions and blanket fingerprinting of protesters and bystanders.

“The appeals case decided yesterday had nothing to do with any of these issues,” said Christopher T. Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which represents some of the plaintiffs. “People were getting singled out because they were engaged in protest activity, and we think that's a fundamental civil liberties violation.”

The two protesters in the case, Michael Marcavage and Steven C. Lefemine, were carrying anti-abortion signs on a sidewalk along Seventh Avenue between 32nd and 33rd Streets, facing Madison Square Garden, on Sept. 1, 2004. Three police officers ordered the men 17 times to leave the sidewalk and go to a demonstration zone a few blocks away, according to Thursday's ruling. When they refused, an officer arrested them. Mr. Marcavage was charged with resisting arrest, and both were charged with disorderly conduct. The charges against both men were later dismissed.