Hunt adv. Lombardi: Sergeants-At-Arms Expel Man Wearing 'Pro-Life U' Sweatshirt from Colorado State Senate Gallery

Government officials can’t kick someone out of a public legislative gallery just because they don’t like the message on their shirt. If there is anywhere that Americans’ First Amendment rights should be safe, it’s in their state capitol.

On March 21, 2023, Jeffrey Hunt, a talk radio host and former director of the Centennial Institute think tank at Colorado Christian University, visited the Colorado State Senate with a group of his then-coworkers. Hunt wore a sweatshirt reading “Pro-Life U” (referring to the University) to silently oppose three bills under consideration that would regulate and penalize crisis pregnancy centers. 

Hunt entered the Senate’s public gallery, but Colorado sergeants-at-arms determined “Pro-Life U” is a “political statement” prohibited by a gallery rule banning “pins or apparel expressing political statements.” They ordered Hunt out of the gallery and said he must remove his sweatshirt if he wanted to re-enter. Unwilling to give up his First Amendment rights, Hunt chose to sit alone, outside the gallery, banished from watching his lawmakers in action.

Colorado’s rule banning “political” pins and apparel is unconstitutional. The First Amendment’s protections are at their strongest when political speech is at issue. And any rule that limits speech must be capable of reasoned application. Because Colorado’s rule does not explain what it means for apparel to express a “political” statement, each official has nearly unlimited discretion to enforce it as he or she sees fit. Demonstrating this danger, just three weeks before officials banished Hunt from the gallery for his “political” “Pro-Life U” sweatshirt, officials allowed a large group of high school students to fill the gallery wearing shirts calling for stricter gun control. Choosing winners and losers based on their viewpoint always violates the First Amendment.

So on July 16, 2024,  FIRE joined Hunt in standing up for the First Amendment right of all Coloradans to silently and nondisruptively express their opinions in their state Capitol. FIRE sent a letter to the Colorado House and Senate sergeants-at-arms demanding they stop enforcing the rule banning political pins and apparel from the galleries. If the sergeants-at-arms do not respond and confirm they will stop enforcing the rule by July 30, 2024, they will need to defend their unconstitutional rule in federal court.