U.S. v THOMAS

III. THE REGULATION IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL FOR OVERBREADTH

A. 36 CRF 50.27(a) is overbroad and therefore void. While the government may limit First Amendment rights it may only do so when it satisfies certain criteria which the Supreme Court set out in UNITED STATES v O'BRIEN, 591 U.S. 367-77 (1968):

1. The regulation is within the Constitutional power of the Government;

2. the regulation furthers an important or substantial governmental interest;

3. the governmental interest is unrelated to the suppression of free expression, and;

4. the incidential restrictions on First Amendment freedoms is no greater than is essential to the furtherance of the Government's interest.

B. 1. 1. "The regulations banning the use of parks for living accommodations are designed not to stifle First Amendment expression but to protect undesignated parks from activities for which they are not suited or the impacts of which they cannot sustain." Fed Reg Vol 47 No 108 June 4, 1982 pg 24304

2. Both defendants have been continuously engaged in the same denonstration (activities) for which they are presently before this Court since the summer of 1981. The purpose of a demonstration (defendants activities, is to communicate, and Lafayette Park is certainly not unsuited to the activity of demonstrating. 0f course it is possible to label a "demonstration" as a "camp", or a "dog" as a "cat", but to do so is both dishonest and misleading. Both defendants maintain that their activities have resulted in no "impacts" which the area could not sustain.

3. Therefore, unless the Government can show some impacts which the area has been unable to sustain, or some aspect of the defendants or their activities which is so unsuited to Lafayette Park as to cause the Government "substantial interest," then it must be that this regulation is unconstitutional in its overbreadth, at least as applied to the defendants.

[ As the Supreme eourt also wrote in THORNBILL v ALABAMA, 310 u.s. 88, 97 (1940), a law is void on its Face if it "does not aim specifically at evils within the allowable area of (government) control, but sweeps within its ambit other activities that constitute an exercise" of protected expressive, or associational rights.]

B. 2. Therefore, although the Park Service purportedly designed this regulation to further governmental interests in protecting park land it is hard to understand, if the defendant did-sleep, how peaceful sleep as part of a demonstration serves any purpose other than to impermissably suppress free expression.

I ............... DEFENDANT'S ACTIVITIES ARE PROTECTED (theoretically) UNDER THE FIRST AMENDMENT.

II.............THE BUREAUCRACY SHALL PASS NO REGULATION RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION, THE FREE PRACTICE THEREOF, OR FOR ABRIDGING FREEDOM OF SPEECH, FREEDOM OF THE PRESS, OR THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, OR PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR REDRESS OF GRIEVANCE.

B. 3. THIS COURT THAT THERE IS SOME "substantial government interest" . . . . . . . . . . . THEREFORE ,

IN THE FACT THAT THE WASHINGTON LEGAL FOUNDATION
"MOONIE TIMES" (I:See Attachment IX) DON'T LIKE THE WAY
DEFENDANT THOMAS LOOKS, THEN (practically) DEMOCRACY IS DEAD.

A. 36 CFR 50.27(a) IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL FOR

1. Application of the "camping" ban against the defendants while not enforcing it against others violates the defendants' First and Fifth Amendment rignts. The Supreme Court has held that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a state from barring access to a public forum to one group while allowing access to another group. See NIEMOTKO v MARYLAND, , 268, 272 (1951), POLICE DEPARTMENT v MOSLEY, 408 U.5. 92 (1972).

"...the First Amendment mandates that speech restrictions be "narrowly drawn" ... The regulatory technique may extend only as far as the interest it serves. The State cannot regulate speech that poses no danger to the asserted state interest...nor can it completely suppress information when narrower restrictions on expression would serve its interest as well."

CENTRAL HUDSON GAS AND ELECTRIC CORP. v PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION OF NEW YORK, 447 U.S 557, 565 1980). See also SHELTON v TUCKER, 364 U.S. 479, 488 (1960).

2. "Equal Protection analysis in the Fifth Amendment area is same as that under the Fourteenth Amendment." BUCKLEY v VALEO, 424 U.S. 1, 93 (1976), WEINBURGER v WEISENFELD, 420 U.S. 536, 538 n2, and case cited (1975).

3. Therefore Park Service officials owe citizens the same duty of evenhanded enforcement of law that their state counterparts owe by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment.

B. "A non-partisan group of veterans organized in 1982 by Vietnam Veterans David Morgan, President, and Terrance McConnell, Vice President, both of Cleveland, Ohio. Morgan, McConnell, and veteran representatiuies from a number of other states from across the nation have been maintaining a twenty-four-hour-a-day color guard at the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial since December 24, 1982. Those dedicated men and women intend to continue their vigil until all Prisoners of War and Missings In Action are fully accounted for." So reads the opening paragraph of the statement of United States House of Representatives Member Douglas Applegate, dated October 3, 1983, The Veteran's vigil continues to the present date. (See Attachment X)

C. If there are seven components of "camping," and defendant Thomas has violated two of them, THE VETERAN'S VIGIL SOCIETY has violated at least six of the seven.

I............ THE LAW DEMANDS THAT ALL PEOPLE BE TREATED EQUALLY

II............(theoretically) DEFENDNAT THOMAS AND THE VETERAN'S VIGIL SOCIETY ARE EQUAL, BUT (practically) THE VETERAN'S VIG1L SOCIETY IS DOING MORE "CAMPING" THAN DEFENDANT THOMAS,

III ....... THEREFORE, SHOULD THIS COURT BELIEVE THAT THE GOVERNMENT HAS NO "substantial governmental interest" WITH RESPECT TO THE VETERAN'S VIGIL SOCIETY; THEN THIS COURT WILL HAVE DECIDED THAT PRISONERS-OF-WAR ARE MORE EQUAL THAN PRISONERS-OF-PEACE.

6. "We hold these Truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are the rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pureuit of Happiness."
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE]

CLOSING ARGUMENT

66............Before the Creator, GOD ALMIGHTY, defendant Thomas will wager his eternal Soul that, LOGICALLY, he has demonstrated, in PRINCIPLE, that

666...........in the SYSTEM OF THINGS, which is the United States of America,

A) FREEDOM has come to mean "money,"
B) JUSTICE has become a "meaningless game," and
C) EQUALITY reads: "Do unto others all you can get away with."
(See Attachment XI)

Respectfully Submitted by

Defendant Thomas

February 21, 1984

FOOTNOTES:

"In conformity with the interests of the working people, and in order to strengthen the socialist system, the citizens of the USSR are guaranteed by law, a) freedorm of speech, b) freedom of the press, c) freedom of assembly,...." CHAPTER X Art. 125 Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In order to ensure to citizens freedom of conscience, the church in the USSR is separated from the state and the school from the church. Freedom of religious worship and freedom of anti-religious propaganda is recognized for all citizens.l\ CHAPTER X Art. 124 Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Defendants Facts Continued

Case Listing --- Proposition One ---- Peace Park