TRI In The News
Free Speech Rights for Environmentalist Defended in VA
8/4/2011
TRI IN THE NEWS: FREE SPEECH RIGHTS FOR ENVIRONMENTALIST DEFENDED IN VA
From One News Now
Original article available here.
The Rutherford Institute has come to the rescue of an environmentalist whose constitutional rights were violated.
Institute founder John Whitehead says the protest was over mountaintop removal mining. "[It's] a big thing happening across the United States but relatively new in Virginia where the large Virginia Dominion Power Company is now doing that -- and there is strong evidence that [that type of mining] does cause environmental problems such as runoff in streams and killing of wildlife," he explains.
The demontrators were on a private easement holding signs near a private inn where the company's board of directors and shareholders were meeting when police told them they were on private property, not public, and ordered them to leave.
Chris Walters, one of the demonstrators, declined and was arrested on a trespassing charge. He was found not guilty. Whitehead adds that Walters' constitutional rights were violated.
"What most people don't know is that on roads, that small area between the rail and the white line where cars can pull off, that's been preserved basically for free-speech rights by most courts. So people have a right to be there as long as they're not causing a safety problem," the founder says.
According to Whitehead, it is basically the same right pro-life demonstrators have in standing on a public right of way with messages against abortion.
