Freedom Alert ! T shirt wins place on "No fly" list in Reno
32 year old Lumber saleswoman Lorrie Heasley of Woodland, Wash., was returning with her husband from Disneyland on a SouthWest Airlines LA – Portland ,Ore and the flight was on stopover at Reno-Tahoe International Airport, halfway through Heasley's scheduled trip from Los Angeles to Portland, Ore.
As a gag to wind up her Democrat voting parents set to greet her, she was wearing a T-shirt , she bought at a shop at Venice Beach, CA. that bore images of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a misspelt reference to the film “Meet the Fockers” a takeoff on a 2004 movie starring Ben Stiller, Robert DeNiro and Barbra Streisand. Want one, thong, coffee mug ? Go here
Although no-one had complained in LA , passengers joining in Reno complained and she agreed to cover the words with a sweatshirt, but when the sweatshirt slipped while she was trying to sleep, she was ordered by cabin staff to wear her T-shirt inside-out or leave.
Lorrie and her husband were booted off with an offer for re-imbursement of ticket taxes. They made the rest of the journey by rental car arriving home next day. She is seeking help from ACLU to claim costs for gasoline, a $68 rental car from Avis and a $70 Reno hotel bill. ACLU point out that she was allowed to board the plane by South West and only acted when people raised the matter.(KRNTV video story)
Allen Lichtenstein, lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union in Las Vegas said Heasley's T-shirt is "protected" political speech under the First Amendment to the Constitution – although the plane is a private space and the Government was not involved. Constitutional lawyers we have consulted say (see Cohen v California) say it is covered by the 1st amendment because it is a company regulation.
However the New York Times consulted the heavyweights ..
"The Constitution only restricts the government," said Geoffrey R. Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago and the author of "Perilous Times: Free Speech in War Times."Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Marilee McInnis said several passengers complained about the shirt at Reno and she said Southwest rules (filed with the FAA) allow the airline to deny boarding to any passenger whose clothing is " “offensive, abusive, disorderly or violent or for clothing that is lewd, obscene, or patently offensive.”
Unless Congress passes a law forbidding airlines from removing passengers because of messages on their T-shirts, no statute has been violated, said Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"I have cousins in Iraq and other relatives going to war," Heasley told the Reno Gazette-Journal. "Here we are trying to free another country and I have to get off an airplane ... over a T-shirt. That's not freedom."
Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Marilee McInnis said several passengers complained about the shirt at Reno and she said Southwest rules (filed with the FAA) allow the airline to deny boarding to any passenger whose clothing is " “offensive, abusive, disorderly or violent or for clothing that is lewd, obscene, or patently offensive.”
Just makes you wonder what would have happened if she had taken it off as requested and sat there showing her tits.
Der Spiegel makes a big story out of it which gets the German Bloggers excited - here
Recent blogs on same topic here
2 comments:
Her sweatshirt "slipped" off? I'm not buying it.
And I read a different account, saying she voluntarily left the plane after refusing to get rid of the shirt.
It's important for the lefties here to remember that she wasn't booted for the political slant of her shirt, she was booted because of the foul language on her shirt. And Southwest has a policy about lewd clothing....
If the sweatshirt "slipped off", she was wearing it as a blanket, not as a shirt.
On a related note, who has time to fall asleep on a flight from LA to Reno?
Post a Comment