Story – group wears “Please ID buttons” to polls. This button seeks to undermine the argument that being asked for identification is a painful experience. It ends up in a court fight that results in the buttons being banned. After that, the button proponents hint they will disobey a court order and wear them anyway.
My take: this is a bad idea in a nation governed by law, something I suspect the button wearer’s support. Refusing to obey a court order would tear at the fabric of law that we all rely on to ensure the rule of law protects us all. Consider whether we would want King Samir Shabazz to ignore the court order prohibiting him from showing up with a nightstick inside the city of Philadelphia. Such behavior encourages more lawlessness. So lets hope that the response is to appeal the ruling rather than violate the ruling.
Um…
Anyone can disobey a court order. There are consequences for doing so, but there’s nothing stopping them. For example: southern laws prior to the Civil Rights Act. Do you honestly think the local courts were going to throw out the racist laws of the time? Would you have argued that those fighting for their rights obey a local court’s order to remain in the back of the bus? Come now.
Civil Disobedience is a time honored tradition here in the US. So long as they’re willing to accept the consequences of disobeying the court order, I say let them. Sometimes the law, and the legal system as a whole, is an ass.
Editor note: Are we equating sitting at a lunch counter to oppose Jim Crow with wearing a sticker to the polls saying – ID me? Moreover, there were NOT court orders in most of those cases placing the civil rights movement under an injunction. Sure, there were state statutes enforcing Jim Crow. But using the events of the civil rights movement, in most cases, does not offer procedural equivalence to the sticker case. It is one thing to defy an unjust law. It is quite another, in my view at least, to flaunt a judicial order with which one disagrees.