A Seattle man who was arrested twice for preaching in public won a “complete victory” after a judge granted him a preliminary injunction and ordered him to pay damages to the city.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein issued a permanent injunction preventing Seattle police from repeating their criminal actions against Matthew Meineke. Rothstein's consent order “represents a complete victory for the pastor,” said a post from First Liberty Institute, which represents Meineke.
According to First Liberty:
The consent decree gives Pastor Meineke all of the relief he sought in this case. He is now free to read the Bible and preach the gospel on the streets of Seattle without fear of arrest. He also received monetary damages for his two false arrests, plus reasonable attorneys' fees and costs.
Mission Aborted
Meineke's problems began when he decided to preach at a June 24, 2022 protest against the Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade. Nate Kellam, senior counsel for First Liberty, told CBN News that Meineke, who claims to convert people through his preaching, viewed the angry pro-abortion crowd as a missionary platform.
“So he went out with his Bible and read the Bible,” Kellam said. “He has serious pro-life beliefs, but that wasn't his purpose. He really wanted to share the gospel.”
Not surprisingly, his audio Bible readings “were not very well received,” Kellam added.
About an hour later, protesters surrounded Pastor Meineke and began yelling abuse at him. One protester snatched Meineke's Bible. He pulled a different Bible from his bag and began reading. Another protester then grabbed the Bible and ripped out pages. As Antifa protesters, some wearing bulletproof vests, approached, Pastor Meineke grabbed a traffic sawhorse. Five of them lifted Meineke and the sawhorse, carried them across the road and dropped them on the concrete.
But as he continued to read his Bible, Meineke was soon assaulted again, losing one of his shoes, and told Church Leaders magazine he was “kicked in the head so hard that he lost consciousness during the service.”
When the police finally arrived, who would they arrest? The peaceful preacher, or the left-wing thugs who had attacked him? This being ultra-progressive Seattle, they naturally chose the former. They told Meineke that he would be arrested for obstruction if he didn't move somewhere else, a charge that city code defines as failing to comply with a police officer's orders to stop engaging in conduct that could harm someone.
Meineke was taken to the police station, where he was detained for approximately two hours and then released without charge.
Gay arrests
Two days later, Meineke showed up to Seattle's PrideFest, where his Bible reading was not well received. Again, he was subjected to profanity and jeers. One protester poured water over his Bible, while another stole it and threw it in a toilet. Again, he was arrested when he refused to leave.
Church Leaders reported:
Meineke was perplexed that people were more upset by his sermon than by the naked grown men who were wandering around children at Pride events, but who were not arrested.
“This city is full of crime. There are needles everywhere. There are lawless homeless camps everywhere. There are assaults. There is broken glass. Antifa runs this city. And yet they have time to send in 10 cops to arrest a street preacher for reading the Bible in the park,” Meineke said in a video after the arrest.
Meineke was charged with obstruction but released on bail, and at the hearing he was told the city attorney's office had decided not to prosecute him but reserved the right to do so “in the future.”
A fascinating decision
Meinecke sued the city and police in federal court, seeking exactly what he ultimately got: a permanent injunction, damages, costs and attorneys' fees. After the district court denied his motion, he appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
In April, a three-judge panel overturned the district court's decision. The panel's opinion, written by Judge Jay Bybee, rejected all of the city's arguments.
“The city's enforcement action against Meinecke is a content-based obstructionist veto,” Bybee wrote. He cited precedent and added: “The classic case for an obstructionist veto is one in which the government silences a particular speech or a particular speaker 'because of anticipated disorderly or violent reactions from the audience.'” (emphasis in original)
“The Supreme Court has emphasized that it is 'firmly held' that 'the public expression of ideas may not be prohibited solely because the ideas themselves are offensive to some listeners or because bystanders object to peaceful and orderly demonstrations,'” Bybee wrote.
The city tried to argue that officers were simply enforcing “time, place, or manner” restrictions on speech and not trying to stop Meinecke from preaching, but Bybee pointed out that “when police choose to discipline non-threatening speakers, the government is simply picking a side in the debate and enforcing that choice through disruption laws.”
The judge sent the case back to the district court for an injunction, which Rothstein complied with.
“This outcome is not surprising — governments should not silence their citizens just because their audience doesn't like it,” Kellam said. “Pastor Meineke is excited to be able to put this incident behind him and get back to spreading the gospel in the streets of Seattle.”
