TRI In The News
Seal-Banning Ordinance a Fluke
9/13/2011
TRI IN THE NEWS: SEAL-BANNING ORDINANCE A FLUKE
From One News Now
Original article available here.
Following a blogger's battle with Fluvanna County (Virginia) officials, free speech is officially free speech.
Bryan Rothamel operates a blog entitled "FLUCO" in which he frequently writes and reports about news and other local events, as well as the activity of the Virginia county's government officials. But John Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute explains that his client found himself in hot water when he started using the county seal in the background of the video blog.
"The county in September 2010 threatened him with an ordinance. They did write an ordinance declaring that they owned the county seal. It was their property, and [the ordinance] made it a crime for any member of the public to display the seal without getting permission from the county," Whitehead reports.
So his group filed suit to protect Rothamel's free-speech rights, and a federal court recently ruled in his favor.
"What's important here is that you have local bloggers on the Internet, local TV, [and] Internet television shows trying to use the seal to critique county government, and the county and the state officials don't like it," the attorney accounts. "And so they're trying to stop these people from talking about them and exposing what they're doing, in many instances."
The Rutherford Institute is also defending a New Jersey man with a local-access television show who also has been threatened by the county because of his use of the county seal. But Whitehead contends that the similar laws found throughout the country are equally unconstitutional.
