Parade dispute heads to court

Minuteman Project sues Patriots Day Parade Assn. and city over exclusion from event. Organizers say their decision was legal.The Minuteman Project, a group formed by James Gilchrist to keep illegal immigrants out of the country, claims it is illegally being excluded from participation in Laguna Beach’s Patriots Day Parade.

A complaint was filed Jan. 27 in Orange County Superior Court asking for injunctive relief, damages and declarative relief for alleged violations of the project’s civil rights, and breach of contract and unfair business practices by the parade association.

“We just want to be included, and I think injunctive relief means we have to be included,” Gilchrist said Thursday.

No court date had been set as of Thursday.

“Our attorney Richard Ackerman is requesting an immediate hearing on an emergency basis, as soon as the dockets are open, because we are damaged by viewpoint discrimination,” Gilchrist’s media relations director, Tim Bueler, said Thursday.

The parade is scheduled for March 4 and does not plan at this time to include the Minuteman Project.

“We are planning to have the parade in its usual, small-town, community-unifying fashion,” said parade association Vice President Charles Quilter III, a retired Marine colonel. “We believe we are within our rights to exclude the Minuteman Project, based on a strong body of law.”

In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of a Boston St. Patrick’s Day parade to exclude a gay, lesbian and bisexual group from participation. Two years earlier, the New York Supreme Court rendered a similar verdict related to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade there. The decisions were based on the parade organizer’s right to exclude groups who did not represent the organizer’s goals.

“Our association does not take a position on illegal immigration,” Quilter said. “We have never criticized the Minuteman Project and we never will. It’s just that it is a political organization.

“And even if it weren’t, we have the right to keep anyone out of the parade that does not meet our goal, which is to unify the community, including the Minuteman entry, because its previous contacts in the city have been disruptive and required police presence.”

The suit named as defendants the parade association, the city of Laguna Beach, the La Playa Center, which offers English classes and child care under the auspices of the Crosscultural Council, and the Peace Vigil, a loosely organized group of antiwar protesters.

“I don’t know who they are going to sue,” said vigil participant Jeanie Bernstein. “We have no members. We have no officers. We are just people who show up.”

Vigil participants carry antiwar signs, some specifying the war in Iraq. However, in the parade, marchers carry only “peace” signs, per a parade association requirement.

“No one is against peace,” Quilter said.

The suit also claimed that the parade is a business under the state Unruh law because it imposes a $20 entry fee, a charge disputed by association attorney Gene Gratz of Laguna Beach.

“In 1998, the California Supreme Court ruled in the case of Curren vs. the Boy Scouts of America that the scouts were not a business under the Unruh law and cited the Supreme Court ruling that private organizations do not have to include participation that is not consonant with the organization’s goals,” Gratz said.

The Minuteman suit was served on the Parade Assn. on Tuesday. The city had not been served as of Thursday morning.

“Service starts the time clock for the defendants to respond to the suit,” City Attorney Phillip Kohn said. “Defendants then have 30 days to respond.”

Thirty days from Thursday would be March 4, the day of the parade.

Quilter said the parade association expects the injunctive relief issue to be resolved before the parade date.

Besides injunctive relief, the suit asks the court to award the project at least $25,000 in general damages from the parade association, declare that the conduct of the city and of the association unlawful, and have La Playa and the Peace Vigil removed from the parade because “they are in no different standing or legal position than the plaintiff.”

Gilchrist said Thursday that he was not aware that the lawsuit asked to have any group excluded.

He also said that even if the project’s entry were accepted, he was not sure the lawsuit would be abandoned.

“That’s up to our lawyer,” he said.

The suit claimed the entry denial damaged the project’s reputation.

However, according to Gratz, the association does not announce the names of rejected applicants; it was the Minutmen who went public.

“Gilchrist seems to be sophisticated and well-financed,” Gratz said. “But they are trying to do something the law precludes.”