New Orleans’ fees will kill jazz funerals, suit says

NEW ORLEANS —  The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana filed a lawsuit Thursday on behalf of one of New Orleans’ best-known traditions: the “second-line” dance processions and jazz funerals that regularly take place on city streets.

The suit claims the city of New Orleans and the governor’s office are imposing excessive fees and unfair permit rules on organizations that hold parades. The city raised fees after one person was killed and several others were wounded this year at shootings at two parades.

The higher fees start at around $1,200, and a state bond of $10,000 must be posted as well. ACLU lawyers said that would prevent many so-called Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, renowned for their processions and funeral marches, from conducting parades and would infringe on their 1st Amendment rights.

“The policies that are currently being enforced are a curtailment of their freedom of speech and expression,” said cooperating attorney Carol Kolinchak.

“If we do not get relief from the court,” said Joe Cook, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana, “then this tradition will be taxed out of existence.”

The ACLU is representing the Social Aid and Pleasure Club Task Force, which comprises 21 groups, and other plaintiffs. The defendants are the city of New Orleans, Mayor C. Ray Nagin, Police Supt. Warren J. Riley and Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco.

Police spokeswoman Bambi Hall said the department had not seen the suit and would “reserve comment until further review.”

City officials did not return calls for comment Thursday. Assistant City Atty. Franz Zibilich told the Associated Press that the city did not intend “to discriminate against one group vis-a-vis another group” but that “safety and protection cost money” and “passing along the costs of safety is nothing new.”

“City code allows the police chief enormous discretion” in setting escort fees, and “courts have held that this discretion is unconstitutional,” ACLU staff attorney Katie Schwartzmann said in a statement.

Shortly after the parade shootings, Police Supt. Riley told reporters the new charges would pay for extra escort officers, including mounted police. Schwartzmann said that “imposing fees because of the behavior of a hostile audience is constitutionally impermissible.”

The club task force president, Tamara Jackson, said she viewed the price increase as the latest chapter in a history of friction between New Orleans police and second-line marchers.

“It’s always been problematic, the relationship ... with some officers, not all,” said Jackson. “The problem arises when there is a lack of understanding of the culture. They have no knowledge of [it] and don’t understand it, so they don’t appreciate it.”

She and other leaders said they feared the increased fees could spell the demise of the year-round second-line parade culture when many groups are still struggling to reestablish themselves after Hurricane Katrina.

Before the hurricane hit in August 2005, New Orleans had about 55 social aid and pleasure groups that regularly held Sunday parades, task force leaders said, whereas today the city has about 30.

Many organizations lost meeting venues, costumes, instruments and floats in the flooding, and scores of members lost their homes and moved.

New Orleans’ clubs date back to Emancipation, historians say.

They initially provided community aid, such as insurance, loans and funding for education, healthcare and funerals, said anthropologist Helen A. Regis of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, who has studied the clubs and the second-line parading tradition for over a decade.

Many of the clubs formed marching bands for funeral processions.

The brass band would play dirges en route to the cemetery, but on the way back, the rhythm would pick up and marchers in the second line of the procession would jump and dance, hoisting umbrellas and waving handkerchiefs.

Out of this grew New Orleans’ famous jazz funerals.

Since Katrina, the clubs have provided an information and social support network, Regis said, and have given residents a way to reclaim a unique aspect of their city in “a ceremonial way.”

Jackson, a founding member of the VIP Ladies and Kids club, says: “We’re trying to rebuild our personal lives as well as keep the culture alive. It’s a struggle.

“If the fees don’t decrease, we won’t exist.”

Nine of her group’s 15 members settled in other cities after Katrina.

Destroyed along with the club’s meeting venue in the Uptown neighborhood was $10,000 to $15,000 worth of property, including the organization’s signature banner, costumes, and equipment for cutting ribbons and making streamers, Jackson said.

Richard Anderson of the Single Men club said costlier parade permits might compel his group to charge for participation in their parades and to raise membership dues.

A demise of second-line processions, Anderson said, would hurt not only the clubs but also businesses along parade routes.

Jackson said the parades were part of New Orleans’ identity and if they died out, it would be a blow to the community.

“This is our ancestral heritage,” Jackson said.

ann.simmons@latimes.com