National Park Service Withdraws Proposal to Make Protesters Pay for Security

By Michael E. Ruane and Marissa J. Lang, The Washington Post

28 October 19

Congressional hearings rarely accomplish anything. If Democrats want the impeachment hearings to succeed, they need to run them differently.

he National Park Service announced Monday it is withdrawing a proposal that could have, among other things, made protesters repay the federal government for the cost of security at demonstrations.

Opponents said the measure would have saddled protest organizers with enormous costs, crippling their ability to protest and exercise their rights under the Constitution. The proposal would have affected gatherings on the Mall, President’s Park, around the White House and other federal land in the Washington area.

To obtain a permit for a protest in the District, organizers already are required to provide amenities to demonstrators, such as toilets, medical tents and cooling stations for hot days. The Park Service proposal to charge for security would have added a hefty price tag for organizers of larger events.

“If someone called me to say, ‘I want to have a protest,’ and I said, ‘Cool, the Park Service is going to charge you $150,000 for security,’ they would hang up the phone,” Samantha Miller, an organizer with DC Action Lab, a company that helps plan demonstrations in Washington, said recently. “There are already a lot of preexisting fees that organizers get asked to pay. Add in something like a security fee, and there’s just no way most people or organizations would be able to afford it.”

About 750 First Amendment demonstrations converge on the Mall annually. The largest rallies often require additional support from Park Service personnel and Park Police to ensure safety and to limit harm to federal land, which prompted the agency to seek ways for recouping those costs.

The Park Police has requested hundreds of thousands of dollars in emergency funding over the past two years to support such events. In a statement, the Park Service said the volume and complexity of permit requests has increased substantially in recent years.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, said her organization was ready to file suit, had the new proposals gone through.

“This is an extraordinary victory for the people of the United States,” she said. “And it says, without question, to this administration that the people of the U.S. will not be silent. They will not accept any effort to shut down their ability to speak out and to stand up for what they believe in.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, which had voiced opposition to the proposal, also expressed satisfaction at the Park Service’s announcement.

“The National Park Service’s retreat should serve as a reminder that if the administration tries to come after our right to protest, it will have to get through thousands of ACLU members and supporters first,” senior legislative counsel Kate Ruane said in a statement.

The Park Service said in a statement it had received more than 140,000 comments about the proposal from the public and stakeholders. The agency’s August 2018 proposal was quickly met with anger from those who feared it could curtail the public’s right to assemble in protest.

“The quintessential locations for these expressive gatherings in the United States are the National Mall and the public spaces surrounding the White House,” the ACLU, the NAACP and other organizations wrote in protest to Congress last spring. “These spaces are special to American public life. We are very concerned that, should these rules go into effect, they will chill speech and harm our national discourse.”