Court: Protesters Can't Enter West Point For VP's Speech POSTED: 1:11 pm EDT May 25, 2007
UPDATED: 1:13 pm EDT May 25, 2007
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- The mere presence of Vice President Dick Cheney does not turn West Point into a public forum and is not an "open invitation" to protesters, a federal appeals court said Friday.
Cheney is scheduled to deliver the commencement speech at the U.S. Military Academy on Saturday and about 1,000 people had hoped to march onto the campus for an anti-war demonstration.
But the Army denied permission, a federal judge in White Plains agreed and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused Friday to issue a preliminary injunction that would allow the march.
The would-be protesters -- the Democratic Alliance of Orange County and several individuals -- argued that Cheney is likely to speak in support of the war in Iraq and they should be allowed to express an opposing view.
The three-judge panel disagreed, saying the protesters had misunderstood how the First Amendment applies inside a military base.
"Although the vice president is a political figure, he is also an incumbent official in the United States government," the court wrote. "As such, his mere presence on campus to address members of the United States military on their graduation day does not convert the West Point campus into a public forum; nor does it serve as an open invitation for 1,000 or more outsiders to engage in freewheeling and potentially distracting (if not disruptive) acts of political expression."
The protesters' attorney, Stephen Bergstein, said the military gets too much respect.
"No other institution in our society enjoys the deference that the military establishment enjoys," he said. "There are things you can't do in our society and protesting at a military institution is one of them. It's a shame because they invite Cheney and he can say whatever he wants."
Besides the constitutional issue, the court agreed with the Army that it had legitimate security concerns.
"Despite plaintiffs' assurances of a peaceful and orderly protest, the protest and surrounding activities could prove unpredictable and perhaps unmanageable," the decision said.
Bergstein said, "They wouldn't have had any problems with us. I really don't think anything bad would have happened if they'd done this."