The Town that Banned the Garden Club

“No new orga­ni­za­tions shall be per­mit­ted to exist in the City of Gould with­out approval from a major­ity of City Council.”

Gould, Arkansas

Ordi­nance 062011–5

“Con­gress shall make no law respect­ing an estab­lish­ment of reli­gion, or pro­hibit­ing the free exer­cise thereof; or abridg­ing the free­dom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the peo­ple peace­ably to assem­ble, and to peti­tion the Gov­ern­ment for a redress of grievances.

1st Amend­ment

U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion

Some­times fame and glory just don’t get spread around evenly. Like the quar­ter­back of a foot­ball team or the lead singer of a rock band, there are parts of any entity that get more atten­tion than oth­ers. The same is true for the First Amend­ment of the United States Constitution.

After all, we’re nearly uni­ver­sally famil­iar with the free­dom of reli­gion and the ongo­ing debate over the phrase “sep­a­ra­tion of church and state.” We’re also well versed as a nation with our free­dom of speech (even if only Con­sti­tu­tional schol­ars and appel­late judges ever really grasp its fine nuances). But the lat­ter part of the First Amend­ment, cov­er­ing the right of peo­ple to peti­tion their gov­ern­ment and to peace­ably assem­ble, is largely for­got­ten. Or at least it has been con­ve­niently for­got­ten by one Arkansas hamlet.

Gould, Ark., is a small town near Pine Bluff. Roughly the size of the Vil­lage of Ash­ley, it has fallen on hard eco­nomic times with a median income just over $19,000 and more than a third of the pop­u­la­tion liv­ing below the poverty line. The finan­cial trou­bles in Gould extend to the town gov­ern­ment as well. Unable to meet expenses, Gould finds itself with a mas­sive $300,000 IOU to the IRS. The sit­u­a­tion is so bad in Gould that a group of cit­i­zens decided to form a citizen’s advi­sory coun­cil, and that’s where things got ugly on a Con­sti­tu­tional level.

It seems that the town coun­cil of Gould and its mayor haven’t been see­ing eye-to-eye on much of any­thing. On the other hand, the mayor and the citizen’s advi­sory group are get­ting along just fine. This angered the town coun­cil enough that they were dri­ven to action and came up with a new ordi­nance so obvi­ously uncon­sti­tu­tional that their city attor­ney told them not to pass it (for which he was report­edly nearly fired). It is an ordi­nance so patently wrong that pub­li­ca­tions across the polit­i­cal spec­trum from the New York Times to The New Amer­i­can lam­basted the town for its actions.

In lan­guage rem­i­nis­cent of total­i­tar­ian regimes every­where, the ordi­nance first out­laws the citizen’s advi­sory coun­cil specif­i­cally pro­vid­ing that it is, “hereby banned from doing busi­ness in the City of Gould.” Not sat­is­fied, how­ever at the ban­ning of just a sin­gle orga­ni­za­tion, the coun­cil then moved on to out­law every­thing from book clubs to sewing cir­cles. That’s because the sec­ond para­graph of the ordi­nance pro­vides, “no new orga­ni­za­tions shall be allowed to exist in the City of Gould with­out prior approval from a major­ity of City Coun­cil.” That’s right — no poetry club, no soft­ball team, no groups at all unless City Coun­cil signs off on them.

Not sat­is­fied with that action (which the mayor has, for now, vetoed) the City Coun­cil passed a sep­a­rate ordi­nance ban­ning the mayor from meet­ing with “any orga­ni­za­tion” any­where — inside the city or not — with­out prior approval from the City Coun­cil. Appar­ently, vio­lat­ing the right to assem­ble wasn’t enough, so the coun­cil got in a vio­la­tion of the mayor’s right to free speech as well. The mayor vetoed that ordi­nance too, but the coun­cil over­rode his veto.

The Times quoted the mayor as say­ing that the pro­vi­sions were “bla­tantly uncon­sti­tu­tional” and the local FOX affil­i­ate quoted one coun­cil mem­ber as say­ing that coun­cil was empow­ered to have con­trol over “every­thing.” Undaunted, the mayor says he’ll ignore the ordi­nances and the citizen’s group says it will con­tinue to meet.

There are many inter­pre­ta­tions of con­sti­tu­tional pro­vi­sions, but the Gould coun­cil should rest com­fort­ably in the knowl­edge that they man­aged to vio­late the Con­sti­tu­tion so bla­tantly that they brought the entire polit­i­cal spec­trum together in oppo­si­tion to them. And that’s not easy to do.

David Hej­manowski is a mag­is­trate and court admin­is­tra­tor of the Delaware County Juve­nile Court and a for­mer assis­tant pros­e­cut­ing attor­ney. He denies ever being a mem­ber of an ille­gal sewing cir­cle, gar­den group or poetry club.

Posted by Dave Hejmanowski on Jul 21 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.