Federal judge rejects town's effort to unmask Klan

The Associated Press

01.31.00

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ERIE, Pa. — A federal judge has ruled that members of the Ku Klux Klan have a constitutional right to wear white hoods.

U.S. District Judge Sean J. McLaughlin said that while the Klan's racist messages are offensive to most people, members of the group have a right to wear masks as a matter of free speech.

The written ruling released on Jan. 25 reaffirmed McLaughlin's oral decision in November 1998 to strike down part of the 1982 Erie city ordinance. The city sought to unmask 25 members of the Klan who rallied on the steps of the Erie County Courthouse on Nov. 28, 1998.

City solicitor Greg Karle said he had no plans to appeal McLaughlin's final order, which he called "thoughtful."

Now lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the Klan, plan to ask McLaughlin to order the city to pay their legal fees because federal law allows the winner of a civil rights suit to collect legal fees from the loser. Karle said he would fight that request.

The Allegheny County-based Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Realm of Pennsylvania, filed the suit against Erie. The Klan alleged the city's anti-mask ordinance violated members' First Amendment rights to wear white hoods in an act of symbolic speech.

Even before their November 1998 rally, Klan members took the city to federal court, arguing that they wore the hoods to represent "Christian humility."

McLaughlin called the Klan's messages "repugnant" when he first struck down the ordinance in 1998, but said the group is still entitled to constitutional protections. His written ruling expressed the same view.

"We have little trouble accepting the proposition that the white hood worn by the Klan members is symbolic speech, albeit speech whose content may be understandably offensive to most citizens," he wrote.

McLaughlin let stand a part of the ordinance that prohibits masks when the masked person is breaking the law. McLaughlin struck down part of the law that outlawed wearing a mask "with the intent to intimidate, threaten, abuse or harass any other person." The judge found that provision to be overly broad.

McLaughlin said he based his ruling on precedent from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, which sets precedent for Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

Last year, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a New York City ordinance prohibiting Klan members from wearing masks in public.