Orange County withdraws proposed ordinance to forbid ‘targeted’ residential picketing
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Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings withdrew a proposed ordinance he endorsed that would have forbidden “targeted” residential protests like those last year outside a Windermere-area vacation home co-owned by the former Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd.
“For another day and time,” Demings said of the measure, which other commissioners opposed.
The decision to pull the ordinance followed an 11-hour sometimes contentious commission meeting. Some protesters who participated in the demonstrations in front of the now ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s townhouse near Lake Burden in west Orange County pleaded with the board Tuesday to reject the ordinance or schedule a work session to better explain the need for it.
“I was with the protesters last summer through all the marches, all the protests. I stood with them,” said Eric Brown of Orlando, listing Black Lives Matter marches in Orlando, demonstrations at Orlando City Hall and the Orange County Administration Building and at Chauvin’s vacation home.
“We talked in Windermere. People came out of their houses and sat with us, talked with us,” Brown said.
The residential-targeted-picketing ordinance was requested by Orange County Sheriff John Mina. He deployed as many as 40 deputies last year in Windermere to keep watch on 200 to 400 people demonstrating loudly but peacefully May 29 to June 6 on sidewalks and streets.
He said he, too, talked with neighborhood residents and agreed they shared the protesters’ views.
“But some left their homes, paid out of their own pockets to get hotel rooms. It was a major inconvenience and it disrupted their lives,” he said.
Orlando and Winter Park have similar laws, he said.
Winter Park’s was drafted in 2012 after protesters waving signs bearing images of aborted fetuses picketed the home of Jenna Tosh, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando. Three Christian women involved in the protest challenged the ordinance in federal court, alleging the restrictions violated their constitutional rights to free speech and religious expression. An appellate panel upheld the law.
Mina, who like the mayor has served as Orlando police chief and sheriff, said the proposed county ordinance wasn’t intended to infringe on free speech but to protect a residential neighborhood’s peace and tranquility. But U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have upheld bans on targeted pickets — protests directed at one specific home — must generally allow people the freedom to march through or demonstrate in the neighborhood.
He said the ordinance could prevent a hate group from picketing at the home of someone who identifies as gay.
“I would just ask that you give us the tools to handle these types of incidents, and I will promise I will judiciously, fairly, and impartially enforce this ordinance,” Mina said.
Some commissioners pointed out the law protects both unpopular and popular opinions.
“I think any time we talk about our First Amendment rights, we’ve got to be really cautious,” Commissioner Nicole Wilson, who represents the west Orange district where the Chauvin protests took place. “I don’t like the idea of neo-Nazis marching through our neighborhoods but they still do have First Amendment rights and the second we decide to take it from them, then we take it from us.”
Wes Hodge, the Orange County Democratic Party chairman, told commissioners the proposed ordinance was “100% unnecessary.”
“To my knowledge, there is not an epidemic of this happening in Orange County,” he said.
Hodge said he could recall only one other instance of picketing at a home — citing the daily public protests outside Casey Anthony’s parents’ home in Orlando while 3-year-old Caylee was officially listed as missing. Some protesters had carried signs that read “Baby killer” and “My mommy did it!”
Denise Diaz, co-director of Central Florida Jobs With Justice, said the ordinance could have the unintended effect of protecting bad people.
She said eight workers successfully protested last year in front of the home of a painting contactor until he paid the wages he owed them.
