‘The climate that we’re in right now’: Attorney sheds light on settlement in protest lawsuit

Attorney Jaelyn Miller believed she had a strong case against Alamance County and the city of Graham over measures that law enforcement officers took to block a peaceful protest in November 2019.

But on Feb. 21, Miller’s clients agreed to a $120,000 settlement with the city of Graham after a mediation session that lasted more than seven hours.

“We felt like we had claims we could win on at trial, but you also have to weigh that against sort of the climate that we’re in right now, particularly around immigration issues,” Miller told the Times-News. “People may feel differently now about immigration than they did six years ago, or whether that’s better or worse, we really can’t know for sure. In addition, there are logistical considerations, so we have to balance that against how strong we think our case is.”

Miller, a civil rights litigator for Emancipate NC, represented five people in a federal lawsuit stemming from a protest outside the Alamance County Detention Center in November 2019. The protest was organized by Never Again Action to oppose cooperation agreements between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local law enforcement.

At the very heart of Emancipate NC’s lawuit was a claim that law enforcement officers dispersed hundreds of peaceful demonstrators in an unconstitutional manner, Miller said.

“There was a lot of planning, a lot of preparation [for the demonstration],” Miller said. “It started on private property at the Center for Spiritual Living. It was meant to be a Jewish ceremony, and so they did some prayers, sang some songs and other things on the private property.”

From the Center from Spiritual Living in downtown Graham, roughly 300 demonstrators planned to walk to the Alamance County Detention Center and hold the traditional Jewish ceremony of sitting shiva, a period of formalized mourning following the burial of a close relative.

“Before the … [demonstrators] could get 20 feet up the sidewalk, the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office formed a line across the road and the sidewalk to block them,” Miller said. “So they tried to turn and go up another sidewalk, and [police officers] drove around and blocked them there, and eventually forced them into this intersection in the road and blocked them off on all other sides.”

Miller said police officers then stood back and allowed the 300 demonstrators to protest in the middle of the street for roughly 30 minutes before arbitrarily deciding to disperse the crowd and end the protest.

Miller said the lawsuit’s goal was protecting Alamance County citizens wanting to exercise their First Amendment rights.

“What it boils down to is simple — you have the most protections you can have under the First Amendment if you are in something called a public forum — like a public sidewalk, public park, areas that have traditionally been used for protesting,” Miller said. “And so by requiring you to get a permit, … that’s unconstitutional. You have to be free to just hit up your friends, or call your friends and say, ‘Hey, let’s go protest this afternoon.’ It’s called spontaneous activity, and the [U.S. Supreme] Court has held that that is protected, and so those sort of permitting systems usually infringe on your ability to spontaneously wake up and decide you want to protest today, which we all have the right to do.”

“As long as you’re not committing property damage or threatening violence, or actively blocking traffic, there’s no other reason that your protest should be dispersed if you’re in a public forum,” she added.

In the end, the decision on whether to accept the $120,000 financial settlement rested with the demonstrators who sued.

“If they feel like that’s a fair offer in response to what they experienced and the pain [they suffered] and all that they went through, then who are we to stand in the way of that?” Miller said.

Despite the six-year legal fight, Miller said, her clients remain resolute and undeterred and will exercise their First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution.

“They will continue to protest,” Miller said. “I think one of the troubles with this incident is that it caused a lot of them to feel like they could not protest while their criminal charges were going on, and so they went a year without being able to exercise their rights to free speech.”

“That was another thing we raised in the lawsuit was that [my clients’] speech had been chilled by this incident,” Miller added. “Now, they are feeling more free and more vindicated in [their contention] their arrests were wrongful, and they were not doing anything wrong on that day. And yes, I definitely think they will continue to protest.”