Photo Freedom Update: MoCo Tells Silver Spring Developer to Let People Shoot
From Marc Fisher, Washington Post:
“In the continuing saga of the fight for First Amendment rights in the publicly-owned but privately-managed downtown Silver Spring, Montgomery County’s chief lawyer today released a strongly worded opinion making it clear that the new downtown development is public space and must be open to public expression, whether political, religious or the simple act of taking photographs.
The opinion is clear from its first words: “Ellsworth Drive constitutes a public forum.”
In an elegantly reasoned and clear opinion, Assistnt County Attorney Nowelle Ghahhari reminds the Peterson Companies, the developers of the highly successful downtown project, that the land upon which their development sits is public and that the developer has the right only to close Ellsworth Drive to vehicular traffic from time to time, not pedestrian traffic.
Citing court cases in which judges have defined public for as “those places which ‘by long tradition or by government fiat have been devoted to assembly and debate’,” the opinion says that streets and sidewalks are clearly such public places.”