COURT FINDS FORT LAUDERDALE PARK RULE VIOLATED DEMONSTRATORS’ FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS, ASSIGNS DAMAGES IN FOOD SHARING CASE

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Accepting the parties’ settlement, U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon issued a Final Judgment on Dec. 16 declaring that the City of Fort Lauderdale’s park rule against food sharing violated the First Amendment rights of Fort Lauderdale Food Not Bombs and four of its members, permanently enjoined the City from enforcing the rule against them, and ordered it to pay damages to each of them.

“We are thrilled that our clients’ First Amendment rights were finally upheld,” Southern Legal Counsel Executive Director Jodi Siegel said. “This case will long serve as an important precedent.”

In 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit made the first pronouncement on the issue by any federal appeals court in the country in the case, ruling that the First Amendment protects outdoor food sharing as “expressive conduct” under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As the court recognized, members of Fort Lauderdale Food Not Bombs share food as part of their political message that food is a human right.

The federal appeals court then sent the case of Fort Lauderdale Food Not Bombs v. City of Fort Lauderdale back to the lower court to determine whether a city ordinance restricting food sharing that was enacted in 2014, as well as a related park rule, violate the First Amendment and are unconstitutionally vague.

The district court then issued an order comparing the negative effects of adult entertainment to those of food sharing in a public park and repeatedly referring to food sharing by FLFNB as a “social service” in spite of the appeals court’s clear definition of the activity as “expressive conduct” associated with the broader context of a demonstration.

Southern Legal Counsel and attorneys Andrea Costello and Mara Shlackman appealed to the 11th Circuit once more, with Robert W. Ross, Jr. on the brief, and the federal appeals court held that since the Park Rule is still in effect, claims for injunctive relief, declaratory relief, and damages under the Park Rule remained, and further held that the Park Rule violated the First Amendment as applied to Fort Lauderdale Food Not Bombs and its members. The appellate court again remanded the case back to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

“It took six years, but our clients prevailed,” Siegel said. “This will make other local governments think twice before enacting ordinances and park rules that violate free speech.”

Fort Lauderdale enacted its ordinance restricting food sharing in 2014 and began enforcing it against church groups and political activists, including Food Not Bombs participants, arresting them for handing out food to homeless people in public places. The ordinance was part of a package of ordinances criminalizing homelessness the City adopted in 2014, including ordinances restricting camping and panhandling.

The original case was filed in January 2015 on behalf of Fort Lauderdale Food Not Bombs and members Nathan Pim, Jillian Pim, Haylee Becker and William Toole. Fort Lauderdale Food Not Bombs is affiliated with the international Food Not Bombs Movement and had been sharing food as part of weekly demonstrations in the city’s downtown Stranahan Park, a location where homeless people tend to congregate.

The case was brought by Southern Legal Counsel and attorneys Andrea Costello and Mara Shlackman. Amicus briefs were filed by Tracy Segal of Akerman LLP on behalf of multiple Food Not Bombs groups, and by Florida Legal Services on behalf of legal scholars, including Professor Marc-Tizoc Gonzalez, Latina and Latino Critical Legal Theory Inc., and Society of American Law Teachers Inc.

Fort Lauderdale Food Not Bombs had the following statement:

“We're very happy to reach this ending. Seven years ago, we started a longshot campaign to stop Fort Lauderdale's ‘homeless hate laws,’ never knowing how far we would get. Ultimately, we received widespread support to stop the sharing ban in 2014, and now we've won in the courts as well. We are thankful for our lawyers and for our many hundreds of volunteers over the years who believed in the cause. It is our honor to have successfully litigated the first food sharing case that established food sharing as a First amendment activity, an existential goal of the Food Not Bombs movement for decades. We hope others continue to use this civil liberty to its fullest. In the meantime, our sharings continue at Stranahan Park every Friday and Sunday afternoon, until the last belly is full.”