Photo: Wikimedia Commons
MIDVALE — The Sons of Confederate Veterans most likely will not be marching in Midvale’s Harvest Days Parade after the City Council changed the admission rules.
The council voted to designate the parade as government speech, meaning the city can ban messages it finds inappropriate, divisive, degrading, or obscene.
Questions about whether the group, who has marched in the parade in the past, should be allowed to do it again have been swirling for years.
But City Attorney Lisa Garner says the Sons of Confederate Veterans are not the only organization that concerns them.
“We’ve had other [parade] entries in the past that the city would have liked to not have in because they’re frightening. They didn’t feel [they were] family-oriented,” Garner says.
Garner says people are allowed to legally protest the decision.
She also told the council the new rules line up with recent Supreme Court cases, which she believes could protect the city from First Amendment lawsuits.