Designers protesting an unconstitutional ordinance; reports of police bending jewelry into crosses--religious jewelry is at the heart of a controversy now raging in the seaside paradise of Venice Beach, California. Proposed new regulations on public expression & vending on the city's storied Ocean Front Walk are fueling concern over both the suppression and de facto establishment of religion.
How the both be an issue at the same time? The problem lies in the city's attempt to balance the interests of area residents & storefront merchants with First Amendment religious freedom.
Although street performers, protestors and street vendors make the Ocean Front Walk a lively tourist attraction, they also give rise to unmanageable crowds, loud noise and substantial competition to the boardwalk's brick-and-mortar shops. Police, neighbors, shopkeepers--lots of folks are complaining, folks who either have more power or pay more taxes than those with tables by the beach. To deal with the problem the city wants (1) to limit the number of people engaged in "free expression" and (2) to ban boardwalk vending except when an item is produced by the seller, is "inherently communicative and has nominal utility apart from its communication."
Here's where the fun begins. On the one hand, according to the City, jewelry, candles, incense and other items have more than "nominal utility," and so they are included in the ban--leading some vendors, who see their items as "100% religious," to claim this new rule would be an illegal infringement on religious freedom.
Meanwhile, street vendors who do not sell religious items report that local enforcement sees religious speech as beyond the reach of regulations aiming to provide order to public expression. As one craftsperson relates,
LAPD officers have bent her jewelry into crosses and have told her that a religious symbol needs to be on the jewelry if she wants to continue to display and sell it on the boardwalk.
Well, except for the whole cross-bending bit (if that did indeed occur), existing law is not as favorable to the free expression camp as they might like, particularly when it comes to a purported (but non-existent) blanket exemption of religious items from ordinances that apply equally to secular & religious interests. Perhaps instead of selling candles street vendors might want to light a few in prayer to the deity of their choice, because if this ordinance passes its reversal in court might require divine intervention.
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