“The issue of the First Amendment has to take a back seat when it becomes clear and present danger to public safety.”

DEARBORN — The local community was appalled last week following the news of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of Christian extremists who almost enticed a riot at the last Arab International Festival in 2012.

A group calling itself The Bible Believers had filed a lawsuit against the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department for escorting them out of the festival after tensions erupted with festival attendees. The group had spent more than an hour marching around the festival with a pig’s head on a pole and displaying such derogatory signs as “Prophet Muhammad was a pedophile.” 

After attendees began throwing eggs and empty water bottles at the Bible Believers, Sheriff’s deputies made the group leave, fearing their demonstration would lead to violence. 

The Bible Believers subsequently uploaded an edited and widely circulated video on the Internet that “spun” the incident as “Muslims stoning Christians in Dearborn.” 

But what their video failed to depict was that the majority of the attendees who retaliated against them were local children and teens. Several of the attendees were also escorted out of the festival and issued tickets. 

However, the Bible Believers claimed the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department failed to protect them at the festival and restricted their freedom of speech.

Their lawsuit failed twice; once in federal court in Detroit. Then again before a three-judge panel with the Sixth Circuit Court. 

The plaintiffs then brought the case before the entire Sixth Circuit bench for an appeal, which ruled in favor of the Christian extremists, concluding that their freedom of speech hadn’t been protected.

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.”

Arab American Civil Rights League (ACRL) Executive Director Nabih Ayad, who represented Wayne County in the lawsuit, told The Arab American News that it was troubling that the court would side with the First Amendment rights of the Bible Believers under circumstances where public danger was highly likely. 

“The issue of the First Amendment has to take a back seat when it becomes clear and present danger to public safety,” Ayad said. “Not only was there clear and present danger, there was an assault that took place. A riot was about to break. The Circuit (Court) decision is saying you cannot take any action until a riot breaks out. Think about how ridiculous that sounds.” 

Ayad said the court ruling implies that the sheriff’s office had a clear understanding and objective of what should have been done in that situation. However, he pointed out that it seemed even the 15- body Sixth Circuit bench had difficulty reaching a decision. Seven of the judges believed the county responded accordingly.

Ayad added that the Bible Believers would’ve most likely still sued the Sheriff’s Department even if the group had been allowed to conclude its protest or if one of their demonstrators had ended up injured.

“The Sherriff’s Department was in a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation,” Ayad said. “This puts an unfair burden on law enforcement agencies. If high judges can’t figure out what police officers are supposed to do, how can you say there is a set precedent? It shows that there is no clear policy over what law enforcement should do in this type of situation.”

Many would say the incident at the Arab Festival in 2012 was the final boiling point that resulted in its demise. In the years prior, the festival began earning a reputation as a stomping ground for religious disputes that would result in flaring tensions. The city of Dearborn feared liability issues, pressuring the county to step in to manage security at the event in its final years.

Police had been expecting the presence of the Bible Believers at the 2012 festival. A letter was sent to the county days in advance to alert them of the demonstration. 

In an interview last year, Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon said the county recognized and allowed the group to demonstrate its First Amendment rights.  

“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. “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.”

What appeared evident, however, was that the Bible Believers came to the festival looking for trouble. Their KKK style of demonstration had even left a bad taste in the mouths of other Christian groups who routinely attended the festival in peace.

Impact International, a non-profit group comprised of volunteers from southern states who worked to engage in cross-cultural initiatives with Arab Americans, had volunteered at the festival for more than a decade. Following the aftermath of the incident with the Bible Believers, Mike Griffin, the president of Impact International, told The Arab American News in 2013 that Christian groups deemed their actions unacceptable. 

“I can’t be more disappointed and upset with these hate groups that call themselves Christians, who only have the desire to hurt and insult other people,” Griffin said. “It violates everything that Impact International stands for and we were just as hurt by it as the community was.”

Sixth Circuit Court Judge John M. Rogers was among those who dissented.

“It is unfortunately ironic for the Bible Believers to succeed in tactics in this case based on towering but distinguishable cases involving minority civil rights protest,” Rogers said. “In the greater Detroit community, it is the minority’s cultural expression that loses from today’s decision. The disrupters here came from a different part of a larger community to disrupt the first Amendment activity of Arab Americans– a sometimes feared, misunderstood or despised minority within the larger community. Realistically viewed, the Bible Believers were hecklers seeking to disrupt the cultural fair. The police visibly attempted to reconcile the First Amendment rights of festivalgoers and the Bible Believers. There may have been much better ways for the police to handle this situation, but there was no First Amendment violation.”

Wayne County still hasn’t released a statement regarding whether it plans to appeal the court’s decision. If the county choses to take that route, the case will go to the U.S. Supreme Court.