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Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Is Wood v. Moss generalizable?

Wood v. Moss turned entirely on the reasonable security rationale of keeping protesters out of "weapons range" of the President, even if that meant moving only certain speakers out of visual and audio range of their target. But does this rationale apply to all public officials who have security details? Is the President sui generis  for security purposes? Or can the state troopers who protect, say, Gov. Chris Christie also claim a security interest in moving protesters out of weapons range? Certainly the President has a larger security apparatus and is more of an obvious target. But the security logic of Wood is not so obviously limited, especially since there was no evidence that anyone intended to harm the President here (other than the protesters' disagreement with him).

Posted by Howard Wasserman on May 28, 2014 at 07:52 AM in Constitutional thoughts, Howard Wasserman | Permalink

Comments

"But the security logic of Wood is not so obviously limited, ..."

It wasn't security logic, it was suppression of speech. OTOH, that logic can be quite unlimited, as well.

Posted by: Barry | May 28, 2014 9:52:34 PM

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