In a victory for free speech that will have nationwide implications, a federal appeals court ruled that the City of Portland’s ban on being in medians is unconstitutional. The ruling came Friday in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Maine and the law firm Goodwin Procter LLP on behalf of three Portland residents. The lawsuit challenged an ordinance enacted by Portland that prohibited being in any median for any reason other than crossing the street.

As our legal director, Zachary Heiden, told the Bangor Daily News, "This is a really important victory and not only for our clients who are in Portland but for activists around the country. We’ve seen more and more cities and towns using ordinances like this to try to keep people out of downtown areas, and this decision is a reminder that those people have First Amendment rights, too."  

The ACLU and the Goodwin Procter LLP filed the lawsuit in September 2013. In February 2014, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine declared the ordinance unconstitutional. The city appealed, and Friday's opinion by the appeals court upheld the district court ruling.

As Judge David Barron of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit wrote in his ruling, “The City may have been motivated by a perfectly understandable desire to protect the public from the dangers posed by people lingering in median strips. But the City chose too sweeping a means of doing so, given the First Amendment interest in protecting the public's right to freedom of speech.”

Find more about the case, including the appeals court opinion, here.