North Carolinians will not hit the polls until 2012, but the state is already absorbed in political controversy.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the state of North Carolina Sept. 8 in reaction to N.C. General Assembly House Bill 289, which allows for numerous special interest groups to print license plates for profit. The suit was filed because the N.C. branch of Choose Life Inc., an advocacy group based in Florida, was granted the right to print plates while no pro-choice organizations were granted permission. According to the ACLU, this violates residents’ right to free speech.
Representative Mitch Gillespie, R-Burke, is the primary sponsor of HB 289. He said the legislation is not meant to encroach on civil liberties, but rather to help pregnant women in N.C.
“[The purpose of the bill] was to create an avenue to collect revenue to help support pregnancy crisis centers,” Gillespie said. “We have a legislative process here and we followed it. They tried to amend the bill [to include pro-choice license plates], but the amendment was voted down.”
The ACLU is looking to change that.
The “Choose Life” license plates, which would give $15 per plate to the Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship—a Christian group that provides pregnancy counseling to women not seeking abortions—are currently under injunction and cannot go into production until after the lawsuit is settled.
The States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit—which holds appellate jurisdiction over Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia—set a 2004 precedent including license plates under government documents subject to the First Amendment. Now, the courts must decide whether the specifics to the North Carolina case fall under that policy, said Katherine Lewis Parker, the Legal Director of the ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation.
“Ultimately we’ll ask the court to strike down the plate law as unconstitutional, as long as there is not a pro-choice alternative,” Parker said.
The N.C. case is not the first instance in which the ACLU has filed a lawsuit dealing with pro-life license plates. In the past, the group has pressured Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Florida and South Carolina due to their approval of “Choose Life” license plates without passing similar approval for pro-choice groups.
The S.C. case ended in 2004 with the Fourth Circuit States Court of Appeals requiring the state to cease production of anti-choice license plates because the state’s legislature would not pass a pro-choice alternative.
While many view the lawsuit as being mainly about abortion, Lewis Parker said this is misleading.
“This is a free speech issue, not an abortion issue,” she said. “[The ACLU] would feel the same way if there were only a pro-choice license plate and not an anti-choice license plate. It’s a free speech issue if the state opens up the forum to one side of the issue and not the other.”
Around campus, students are discussing the issue as well.
“I think [a] pro-choice group should be allowed to print license plates,” freshman Russell Crock said. “I wouldn’t personally support a pro-life license plate because that is not what I believe in, but if [pro-life supporters] are allowed to have license plates printed then so should the opposing group.”
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