An Ol' Broad's Ramblings
The RIGHT To Speak
Man Sues California Mall After Guard Arrests Him for Having Conversation About God
Imagine getting arrested for just striking up a conversation about religion in public.
That’s what happened to California resident Matthew Snatchko in 2006 when the youth pastor initiated a conversation about God with three shoppers at the Roseville Galleria mall.
The women gave Snatchko permission to broach the subject, but a nearby store employee said they “looked nervous,” so he ordered the evangelist to leave. After Snatchko refused, mall security arrested him.
The man asked permission to speak to the women, the women gave consent, and some yahoo decides they ‘looked nervous’? The women could have, at any time, ended the conversation. The fact they chose not to should be an indication they may have wanted to hear what the man had to say.
“He was put in handcuffs and hauled down to the mall’s security station and later booked at the local jail,” said Snatchko’s attorney Matthew McReynolds of the Pacific Justice Institute, a legal defense organization specializing in the defense of religious freedom.
Snatchko was later released and never charged with a crime, but he and the Justice Institute decided to challenge the constitutionality of Roseville Galleria’s restrictions on conversations about topics such as religion and politics.
Handcuffing a person who is exercising his/her 1st Amendment rights doesn’t sit well with me. A mall banning topics of conversations? Who are they to say what a person can talk about? I wonder how many kiosks were selling Obama t-shirts, plates, posters, etc.? Isn’t THAT violation of their ignorant rule? Is there are bookstore in this mall that sells Bibles? Or any books about the world’s religions? How about a Hallmark store that has cards relating to religious holidays?
“By roaming the mall and randomly approaching other mall visitors, plaintiff effectively circumvents any attempt by Westfield to reasonably regulate his expressive activities in the mall’s common areas,” the court document reads.
McReynolds confirmed Snatchko had been given the Courtesy Guidelines prior to his arrest but said the pastor “believed he was complying with them, and that they were being misinterpreted by the security guards who accused him of ‘soliciting,’ even though he was not selling anything.”
I see. So, you can talk to people in the mall, but it must be in specified locations. I don’t see how that’s not a violation of his 1st Amendment rights. The guards may well have been overstepping their bounds. I’ve had the acquaintance of several such ‘guards’, who thought they were the real thing (police). They tended to overstep their bounds on numerous occasion just because it made them feel like big shots. Kind of pathetic actually.
If this man was called to go to the mall, where many young people tend to congregate, then that’s what he has to do. I find it amazing that so many kids are wondering through life with no direction, no moral compass, and when they are offered a direction, someone has to step in and call a halt.
But constitutional attorney John Eastman says that “to require a permit to even speak about your religious faith to anybody in the mall starts looking like it’s unreasonable and might well be unconstitutional.”
Eastman, a professor at California’s Chapman University School of Law, says because Snatchko was seemingly engaged in a private conversation and not a public address, his speech would not have violated mall rules were it not for its content.
When any organization, be it a mall or a government, invades on a private, consensual, conversation, you know we are in big trouble. Just when did the sharing of faith become a sensitive issue? It use to be an extremely important part of American life. It still should be.
U.S: Amendment I
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.
California: SEC. 2.
(a) Every person may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of this right. A law may not restrain or abridge liberty of speech or press.
