CINCINNATI — The Christian evangelists who marched around Dearborn with a pig’s head on a pole and told Muslims they would “burn in hell” were within their rights under the First Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. 

The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a California group of Christian demonstrators called Bible Believers who were evicted from the 2012 Arab American street festival over their conduct. 

The demonstrators, who made derogatory comments about Muslims and carried anti-Muslim signs, were pelted with rocks, eggs and water bottles. Sheriff’s deputies removed the protesters to restore the peace.

Bible Believers filed a lawsuit in response, which claimed that Wayne County sheriff’s deputies failed to protect them and unlawfully kicked them out to silence their protected speech.

The lawsuit failed twice, once in federal court in Detroit, then again before a three-judge panel with the Sixth Circuit. 

The suit then went before the entire Sixth Circuit bench, which ruled in favor of the Christian evangelists, concluding their speech was protected.

“Diversity, in viewpoints and among cultures, is not always easy,” the justices wrote. “An inability or a general unwillingness to understand new or different points of view may breed fear, distrust and even loathing. But … the First Amendment demands that we tolerate the viewpoints of others with whom we may disagree.”

The Sixth Circuit stressed that the First Amendment “envelops all manner of speech, even when that speech is loathsome in its intolerance, designed to cause offense and, as a result of such offense, arouses violent retaliation.”

Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon said the county recognizes that people have a right to protest.

“They have a right to free speech, but they also have to do it in a reasonable manner that would not jeopardize public safety,” Napoleon told The Arab American News last year. “We didn’t care what the content of their speech was. It wasn’t until we thought that they were an imminent threat to public safety that we shut them down. I think we did the right thing.”