Yesterday, Capitol security officials, including House Sergeant-at-Arms Marshall Clay, resorted to bullying and intimidation tactics to target abortion rights protestors who simply were seeking to exercise their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly.
As an anti-abortion rally took place on the lower rotunda at the Capitol, abortion rights protestors stood in the upper rotunda around the “well,” a circular opening where people can see below to activities on the lower rotunda. Abortion rights protesters held signs to reflect their dissent to the government’s ongoing assault on abortion rights.
Security guards at an entrance to the Capitol forced at least one protester to unfurl her signs for them to read. Once they saw the pro-abortion rights messages on the signs, they told her they weren’t allowed in the Capitol. When she insisted it was her constitutional right to bring signage inside, the guards called her “disgraceful,” she said. She continued through security with her signs.
The unmasked Sergeant-at-Arms also approached protestors, coming within inches of their faces, and told one protestor to put away her sign, and told her that if she did not, he would take her sign — which said “Abortion Bans are Racist” — and “put it somewhere you don’t like.”
After an ACLU-WV attorney, who was at the Capitol Monday for testimony on another matter, approached him, the Sergeant at Arms backtracked and stated that the placement of the vinyl sign was the only issue and that signs could not be draped across the well. He reportedly told another protestor that she would risk arrest and incarceration if she continued to hold a banner across the well because the soft fabric sign might, if dropped, “bludgeon” people participating in the anti-abortion event below. When the ACLU-WV attorney asked Clay what policy he was enforcing, he could not point to any written policy, stating that it was “his” policy. He told the attorney he could not remember the last time it was enforced. The protestors he approached stayed and displayed their signs.
The ACLU-WV attorney requested from the House Speaker and the Office of the House Clerk any written policies and regulations regarding signage and protests in the upper rotunda. At the time of this posting, she has not received a response that points to a specific policy.
Just as anti-abortion protestors have a constitutional right to free speech and to assembly, so too do people with opposing viewpoints. Intimidating and bullying behavior is not only unacceptable, it is an unconstitutional act by government officials intended to stifle free and open speech in the People’s House.
ACLU-WV condemns the actions of Capitol security and the Sergeant-at-Arms and demands an investigation into the actions of government officials at the Capitol yesterday, as well as an immediate public response from the House Speaker and the Capitol police.