St. Louis Park amends targeted residential protest ban

St. Louis Park leaders have opted to keep a decades-old targeted residential protest ban on the books, voting to expand the measure after some briefly considered repealing it.

The City Council on Monday voted 6-1 to amend the ordinance to bring the language of the ban enacted in 1976 into the 21st century by adding multifamily housing to the definition of "dwelling." The previous definition protected only single-family housing from targeted residential protests.

Mayor Jake Spano voiced his support of the ban because of what he's witnessed in his other job as deputy secretary of state.

"Seeing some of my boss Secretary [Steve] Simon's colleagues being targeted in their homes, sometimes by people with guns, really drove home for me that those folks were not having a legitimate conversation about policy or anything like that," Spano said. "Their goal was to intimidate people in their homes because, generally speaking, your home is where your most valuable things are: your family or your friends, those people that you carry closest to you."

Other cities in the metro area with longstanding targeted residential protest bans include Mahtomedi and White Bear Township, which enacted the ordinance in 1990 following protests outside the home of a former executive director of Planned Parenthood Minnesota. Woodbury passed a ban in 2009 after animal welfare activists protested outside the homes of 3M executives. In recent months, Otsego, Elk River, Lake Elmo, Andover, Lino Lakes, Centerville and Hugo have all passed targeted residential protest bans.

Though the majority of the cities passing ordinances haven't experienced any protests, they all cite a targeted protest in Hugo at the home of former Minneapolis police union president Bob Kroll last summer as reasoning for enacting bans.

At that demonstration, more than 100 Black Lives Matter protesters congregated outside Kroll's home demanding that he and his wife, WCCO reporter Liz Collin, be fired from their jobs.

St. Louis Park Council Member Nadia Mohamed was the only vote against the amendment, saying the ordinance doesn't align with her beliefs.

"I'm not in a place where I want to silence or tell Black and brown folks to put aside their need for justice and their rights," she said.

Council Member Tim Brausen said he initially wanted to repeal the ban entirely. But he said the points Spano made about limiting attempted intimidation "struck home with me," and he realized that the ordinance doesn't limit "somebody's rights to freedom of speech."

City Attorney Soren Mattick said the amendment comports with ordinances written in other communities that have survived constitutional challenges.

He told the council that the ordinance does not prohibit people from protesting or marching through a residential neighborhood. But he said if people go to the home of John Doe, for example, "and focus your efforts and stop outside of that house" and block it, that is prohibited.

So long as the demonstration is "transitory in nature and continuing to move on," he said, "this ordinance doesn't address that activity at all."

Kim Hyatt • 612-673-4751