New NC anti-rioting law will target peaceful protesters, lawsuit says
North Carolina’s new anti-rioting law is unconstitutional, a federal lawsuit from the ACLU claims.
The law ramps up criminal penalties for property damage during a protest. It also allows police to charge people who speak at a rally with a felony, if the rally later turns violent — even if they don’t actually take part in any of the rioting themselves.
The ACLU lawsuit targets multiple parts of the law, noting that past court cases have already found similar rules to be unconstitutional.
“North Carolinians could be arrested and prosecuted under the act even if their own actions were entirely peaceful,” the group’s lawsuit states.
The law was conservative leaders’ response to the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, which saw millions of people take to the streets across the country, calling for racial justice goals like an end to police brutality. In Raleigh, protesters marched daily throughout much of the summer of 2020. During two of those days, the protests did turn violent after dark as police launched tear gas at protesters who smashed windows in downtown.
House Speaker Tim Moore, who has a condo in downtown Raleigh where he watched the protests unfold, was a lead sponsor of the bill. He said during a legislative debate that he supports people’s First Amendment right to protest, “but what we can’t do is allow that to be twisted into something where folks can go out and damage property, assault individuals.”
But the penalties in the law are so severe, and it’s written so broadly, the ACLU says, that the law is clearly meant as an attempt to stop people from peacefully protesting in the future. The vague language will give police an excuse to arrest virtually anyone they want, the ACLU says. And once arrested at a protest, the law also requires people to be held in jail for a minimum of 24 hours without the possibility of bail — a strict rule that doesn’t exist for other crimes.
Supporters of the law said it’s needed to discourage vandalism during protests. Opponents said it’s clearly aimed at making people too scared to go to a protest, even if they have no intention of committing any violence themselves, for fear that police will round up hundreds of people, throwing them all in jail, if even just two or three act out.
“This bill forces North Carolinians to risk the immediate and long-term loss of their freedom when exercising their right to protest,” the ACLU said in a press release announcing its lawsuit. “This suit is an effort to protect the right to protest and advances our continued support and defense of the Black Lives Matter movement and activists.”
All Republican lawmakers, and a small number of Democrats, voted in favor of the law earlier this year.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper allowed it to become law without his signature last month, a tacit acknowledgment that even if he had vetoed it, he likely would’ve lost that fight with the legislature.
Cooper had successfully vetoed a similar version of the bill the legislature in 2021, saying “this legislation is unnecessary and is intended to intimidate and deter people from exercising their constitutional rights to peacefully protest.”
But Republicans now have a veto-proof majority in both the state House and Senate, allowing them to defeat Cooper’s vetoes during this new legislative session.
