Inside Report for June 10, 2008

• By JAMES MINTON
• Advocate Baker - Zachary bureau
• Published: Jun 10, 2008 - Page: 7B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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While ‘sticks and stones may break your bones,’ words are seldom criminal.”

So say lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union in taking the side of John Todd Netherland in a dispute with the city of Zachary over the Baker man’s preaching against drunkenness and fornication outside a Plank Road restaurant and bar.

In a bit of situational irony, the ACLU is combining its legal talents with those of the Alliance Defense Fund to defend Netherland’s right to preach in public.

The ACLU is the organization that conservatives love to hate, while liberals accuse the Alliance Defense Fund of constantly trying to blur the boundaries between church and state.

The two groups have been on opposite sides in many religious freedom cases, including the Tangipahoa Parish School Board’s legal battles over school prayer and Bible distribution.

The two are on the same side in Netherland’s case, with the ACLU Foundation of Louisiana filing a “friend of the court,” or amicus curiae brief at the ADF’s invitation, said Marjorie Esman, executive director of the ACLU group.

“This case shows that the ACLU is fully committed to protecting the rights of all,” Esman said in a news release.

The Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization founded by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, notes on its Web site that it sometimes works with groups that share common beliefs on some issues but not on others.

Threatened with arrest for preaching in a loud voice from the edge of the street outside the bar in November 2006, Netherland closed his Bible and went home, but the legal battle was on.

The case is before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, where Zachary is appealing a ruling by U.S. District Judge James Brady of Baton Rouge.

In December, Brady barred the city from enforcing part of a disturbing the peace ordinance, making it a crime to publicly direct “offensive, derisive or annoying words” at another person.

Not surprisingly, the Louisiana Municipal Association is siding with Zachary in the appeal and filed its own amicus brief.

Brady ruled that the terms “offensive,” “derisive” and “annoying” fail to provide “objective, discernable meaning.”