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''Forsyth County, Georgia v. The Nationalist Movement'', 505 U.S. 123 (1992), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court limited the ability of local governments to charge fees for the use of public places for private activities. By 5-4, the court ruled that an ordinance allowing the local government to set varying fees for different events violated the First Amendment due to the lack of "narrowly drawn, reasonable, and definite standards" governing the amount of the fee. ==The facts in the case== Prior Supreme Court opinions had held that public officials could charge fees as a pre-condition for activists to assemble in public places or march down public streets. The rationale was that a fee to recover the costs of police protection, clean-up, and administrative costs did not violate the right to speak and assemble under the First Amendment. The fees sometimes ranged into the millions of dollars. On January 17, 1987 a group of ninety demonstrators conducted a "March Against Fear and Intimidation" in Cumming, Forsyth County, Georgia that was met by as many as three hundred counter-protesters including the Forsyth County Defense League (an independent affiliate of The Nationalist Movement, which advocates the expulsion of all non-whites from the United States) and the Ku Klux Klan. According to Forsyth County, Georgia at least eight counter-protesters were arrested on charges of carrying concealed weapons and trespassing. The following weekend, January 24, 1987, there was a civil rights march attended by 20,000 integrationists, including civil rights leaders, U.S. senators and other senior officials. They were met again by about counter-protesters led by The Nationalist Movement. Sixty-six Nationalists were arrested on charges of parading without a permit. In the aftermath, all Nationalists were acquitted. In U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Judge William C. O'Kelley dismissed ''The Nationalist Movement v. Forsyth County, Georgia,'' threatened to charge Nationalists with perjury, fined the Nationalists $8,000.00 for bringing a "frivolous" lawsuit and barred Richard Barrett, who also served as the Nationalists' attorney, from his court. In the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit Barrett argued that no fees whatsoever could be charged; however, the court ruled for the Nationalists on the grounds that a "nominal" fee could be charged. Although there was a dispute over what was "nominal," O'Kelley was reversed and the fines were vacated. O'Kelley rescinded his ban on the Nationalists' attorney. Forsyth County appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, in ''Forsyth County, Georgia v. The Nationalist Movement.'' Robert S. Stubbs III and Gordon A. Smith, arguing on behalf of Forsyth County, insisted that the Girl Scouts and a local track club had been charged nominal fees, so the Nationalists were being treated equally. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a friend-of-the-court brief in which they contended that a nominal fee of $100.00 sufficed. The high court ruled for the Nationalists on the ground that the ordinance unconstitutionally permitted the county to charge differing fees to different groups without any objective standards to prevent the county from basing the fee on the political views that a group sought to express. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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