The US Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear the appeal of two Colorado residents who were excluded from a speech by President Bush in 2005 because White House aides saw them arrive in a car with a bumper sticker that proclaimed: “No More Blood For Oil.”
Although they had earlier obtained tickets to the event, passed through a security checkpoint, and said they had no intention of being disruptive, White House officials and volunteers ordered them removed from the venue by two uniformed police officers. The officials were acting under a Bush administration policy of barring from then-President Bush’s public appearances anyone who might disagree with him.
The speech was held at a privately owned museum in Denver but was open to members of the public who obtained tickets beforehand. As an official presidential speech, it was paid for with government funds.
The two ejected individuals, Leslie Weise and Alex Young, never said or did anything disruptive and were ejected before the speech began. They later filed a lawsuit claiming Bush aides violated their First Amendment right to display a bumper sticker on a car and not face punishment from government officials who object to the message.
A federal judge threw the lawsuit out. A federal appeals court panel agreed. The panel, in a 2-1 decision, said there was no “clearly established” constitutional right not to be excluded from a speech by the president because of a bumper sticker on the car in which they arrived.
“No specific authority instructs this court (let alone a reasonable public official) how to treat the ejection of a silent attendee from an official speech based on the attendee’s protected expression outside the speech area,” wrote Judge Paul Kelly of the Tenth US Circuit Court of Appeals.
In a dissent, Judge William Holloway said the ejection caused “extreme embarrassment and humiliation” to the two plaintiffs solely because they had arrived at the speech in a car with a bumper sticker that government officials found concerning.
Full story: Supreme Court declines Bush bumper sticker case – CSMonitor.com