Published:
Thursday, August 26, 2010
The ACLU-WA has been working for 75 years to protect the free speech rights of Washingtonians. But it’s not every day that one of our cases becomes the subject of a Hollywood movie with a famous director and real [reel?] movie stars!
The movie is called Grassroots, and it is being filmed all over Seattle this summer. According to the web site, here’s how the story begins: “A short-tempered, unemployed music critic who likes to dress as a polar bear thinks he can harness the power of the people to ride the monorail to political victory in Seattle. And he’s right. Almost.” The man in the polar bear costume (Grant Cogswell) takes his free speech rights seriously. He decided to run for Seattle City Council in 2001 but found himself banned from criticizing his opponent (Richard McIver) in the city voter’s guide.
In real [not reel] life, the ACLU-WA represented Cogswell in a lawsuit against the City of Seattle. The suit was filed in federal district court and argued that the city rule barring a challenger candidate from mentioning or criticizing his or her opponent violated the First Amendment. The district court judge agreed with us, pointing out that allowing the incumbent to say good things about his job performance but not allowing the challenger to criticize the incumbent’s voting record constituted impermissible favoring of one view over the other. A point which is made in much more colorful language in Grassroots!
But a federal appeals court panel in 2003 overturned the ruling. The appeals court said the voters’ guide is a “limited public forum,” which means the government chooses to open a forum for a limited purpose. It is not a traditional public forum like streets, sidewalks and parks – long-recognized places for expressive activity where free speech is protected from government intrusion to the greatest extent. In a limited public forum, a government rule is considered constitutional as long as it is “reasonable.” The appeals court found the rule limiting candidates’ statements to themselves to be reasonable – even though it means some candidates can’t discuss a major reason for their candidacy.
And the issue is very much still with us today. Just last week, the Seattle Times reported that a candidate challenging the incumbent presiding judge of the Seattle Municipal Court was being prohibited from “speaking ill of his opponent in his voters-guide statement.” The challenger is not allowed to mention the incumbent judge’s ratings from a bar association evaluation in the voters guide, even though the incumbent is free to discuss the very same evaluation in the guide.
In fact, the article says, the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission takes the position candidates cannot discuss their opponents at all in voters’ guide statements. Is that any way to have an informed electorate? Even more bizarrely, candidates running for state and federal offices can say all kinds of things about their opponents in the voters guide; it is only candidates for local offices who are limited to statements about themselves.
To learn more about the issue and have fun at the same time, check out the wealth of info available on movie’s official web site. It explains more about the plot and has info about the prominent director and co-writer, Stephen Gyllenhaal, and the star-studded cast, including Jason Biggs, Joel David Moore, Lauren Ambrose, Tom Arnold, and Cedric the Entertainer.
A couple of scenes were filmed at ACLU-WA’s new offices. Our legal director fittingly enough plays the role of an ACLU attorney. We got to learn all about how a movie is made!
Find out more about the Seattle locations where the movie is being filmed and other details here, here, and here. The movie is expected to be released in 2011.
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