Victory in New Orleans for Proclamation of the Gospel

As you know, we handle a wide variety of cases and many of them involve protecting the First Amendment rights of our clients - especially when it comes to expressing their Christian faith.
 
I want to share with you some good news out of New Orleans where we have successfully defended a pastor who was charged with 'disturbing the peace' for reading the Bible in Jackson Square in New Orleans - a public park and popular gathering spot for tourists and locals alike.  There's a wide variety of public activity that takes place in this area - including street performers and open-air artists.
 
It is clear that Jackson Square is a public forum which is designed to permit individuals to exercise their constitutional freedoms of speech and expression.  What's troubling, in this case, is that the police singled out our client - out of hundreds present that day - charged him with 'disturbing the peace' and briefly jailed him.
 
Our legal team in Tennessee got involved in the case quickly and sent a demand letter to the city attorney in June demanding that the charges be dropped and advising the city of its unlawful arrest and violations of our client's First Amendment rights.
 
The case had been set for trial for the third time and was set to take place earlier this week in the Municipal Court for the City of New Orleans.
 
The good news - moments before the trial was to begin - the city attorney dropped all charges against our client.  The city got the message.  You can't trample the constitutionally-protected rights of Christians. 

Our client is now able to exercise his First Amendment rights once more.  We will continue to monitor developments to ensure that his rights remain protected and that city officials do not violate those freedoms in the future.