Bushit indeed
Mar. 29th, 2006 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ebonlockvia Pandagon:
‘Bushit’ bumper sticker gets woman $100 fine in GA
[Denise Grier] pulled over on Chamblee-Tucker Road, unaware of her infraction.
“The officer asked if I knew I had a lewd decal on my car and I thought, ‘Oh gosh, what did my kids put on my car?’ ”
As it turns out, the decal was an anti-Bush bumper sticker Grier slapped on her 2001 Chrysler Sebring last summer. The bumper sticker — “I’m Tired Of All The BUSH—” — contains an expletive.
The officer “said DeKalb had an ordinance about lewd decals and wrote me a ticket” for $100, said Grier, an oncology nurse at Emory University Hospital who lives in Athens.
“This is all about free speech,” Grier said in a telephone interview Monday. “The officer pulled me over because he didn’t agree with my politics. That’s what this is about, not whether I support Bush, not because of the war in Iraq, but about my right to free speech.”
You can find more on this here.
And fortunately one of the commenters noted that the GA supreme court had
already ruled once before on this very subject ("lewd" bumperstickers), and
guess what, it is protected under free speech:
Mr. Bill:
Just a few years ago this case was decided by the Georgia Supreme court:
In Georgia, James Daniel Cunningham was cited for having a bumper sticker bearing the words “Shit Happens” on his car. Prosecutors charged him under a state law that read:
“No person owning, operating, or using a motor vehicle in this state shall knowingly affix or attach to any part of such motor vehicle any sticker, decal, emblem, or other device containing profane or lewd words describing sexual acts, excretory functions, or parts of the human body.”
A jury convicted Cunningham of violating the statute, and he was fined $100. Cunningham took his case to the Georgia Supreme Court, contending that his conviction was invalid because the law was unconstitutional.
The Georgia Supreme Court agreed with Cunningham, writing: “The peace of society is not endangered by the profane or lewd word which is not directed at a particular audience.”
The Georgia high court said Cohen stood for the principle that a state may not criminalize “the public display of a four-letter expletive” in the absence of some compelling reason. The state of Georgia argued that the statute was necessary to shield minors from harmful speech. The Georgia court rejected that argument in its 1991 decision State v. Cunningham, writing: “The audience of observers of bumper stickers is not made up primarily of minors or other persons of delicate sensibilities.”
from http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org
Sadly for this particular police officer and his "delicate sensibilities", even in Georgia the US Constitution still holds some authority.
‘Bushit’ bumper sticker gets woman $100 fine in GA
[Denise Grier] pulled over on Chamblee-Tucker Road, unaware of her infraction.
“The officer asked if I knew I had a lewd decal on my car and I thought, ‘Oh gosh, what did my kids put on my car?’ ”
As it turns out, the decal was an anti-Bush bumper sticker Grier slapped on her 2001 Chrysler Sebring last summer. The bumper sticker — “I’m Tired Of All The BUSH—” — contains an expletive.
The officer “said DeKalb had an ordinance about lewd decals and wrote me a ticket” for $100, said Grier, an oncology nurse at Emory University Hospital who lives in Athens.
“This is all about free speech,” Grier said in a telephone interview Monday. “The officer pulled me over because he didn’t agree with my politics. That’s what this is about, not whether I support Bush, not because of the war in Iraq, but about my right to free speech.”
You can find more on this here.
And fortunately one of the commenters noted that the GA supreme court had
already ruled once before on this very subject ("lewd" bumperstickers), and
guess what, it is protected under free speech:
Mr. Bill:
Just a few years ago this case was decided by the Georgia Supreme court:
In Georgia, James Daniel Cunningham was cited for having a bumper sticker bearing the words “Shit Happens” on his car. Prosecutors charged him under a state law that read:
“No person owning, operating, or using a motor vehicle in this state shall knowingly affix or attach to any part of such motor vehicle any sticker, decal, emblem, or other device containing profane or lewd words describing sexual acts, excretory functions, or parts of the human body.”
A jury convicted Cunningham of violating the statute, and he was fined $100. Cunningham took his case to the Georgia Supreme Court, contending that his conviction was invalid because the law was unconstitutional.
The Georgia Supreme Court agreed with Cunningham, writing: “The peace of society is not endangered by the profane or lewd word which is not directed at a particular audience.”
The Georgia high court said Cohen stood for the principle that a state may not criminalize “the public display of a four-letter expletive” in the absence of some compelling reason. The state of Georgia argued that the statute was necessary to shield minors from harmful speech. The Georgia court rejected that argument in its 1991 decision State v. Cunningham, writing: “The audience of observers of bumper stickers is not made up primarily of minors or other persons of delicate sensibilities.”
from http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org
Sadly for this particular police officer and his "delicate sensibilities", even in Georgia the US Constitution still holds some authority.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Alabama had this...
Date: 2006-03-29 07:11 pm (UTC)So I went to Gatlinburg and had a bumper sticker made up that read:
"EXCRETORY ACTIVITY HAPPENS"
Of course, comes now the Today Show this morning fretting like the Tennessee fainting goats they are at how much swearing goes on. People need to learn some manners, but I'll be damned if I'm going to take direction from those drool-pan donkey-swivers on NBC.