A federal court judge in California has ruled against the City of San Diego for violating the civil rights of seven street preachers.
In August of last year, seven members of Vista, California's West Coast Baptist Church were singing and preaching on a public sidewalk in Oceanside, a suburb of San Diego, when police arrested four of the street preachers and threatened to arrest the remaining three.
Brian Fahling, an attorney with the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, says a lawsuit was filed and the federal court recently sided with the street preachers. The attorney says the recent decision should serve as a warning to other municipalities that may be tempted to violate the constitutional rights of those who seek to witness in this way.
"With the judgment of the court being entered in favor of our clients and $35,000 being paid out by the city, the message is that street preachers shouldn't be treated as common criminals. They have the same rights as everybody else to speak in the public square," the attorney says.
Although this time the court ordered the city to pay a sizeable amount in damages and attorneys' fees, Fahling says what initially happened to the seven plaintiffs is not an isolated incident in the United States. Still, the attorney is optimistic that the outcome in this case will have far-reaching impact in the future. He says the Law Center staff hopes the ruling "will have a chilling effect on cities [that] might be inclined to behave unlawfully."
"We're hopeful that this will be a case cities will look at and say 'We don't want to pay all that money out, so we're going to let them do what the Constitution says they can,'" Fahling adds.
West Coast Baptist Church members have been preaching at that same location in Oceanside without incident for more than two decades.