CONSTITUTIONAL LAW-FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY-EQUAL PROTECTION OF THE LAW

The ordinance here involved prohibited any person from addressing a political or religious meeting in any public park. At a meeting involving no disturbances or breaches of the peace, plaintiff, a Jehovah's Witness, was arrested when he addressed a meeting in a public park. The state supreme court upheld a conviction under the ordinance. Held, reversed.

The principal case is on all fours with Niemotko v. Maryland. The state conceded at oral argument that the meeting was a religious one and that the ordinance as construed and applied did not prohibit church services in the park. Therefore, since Catholics and Protestants could hold their services there, it would be treating the religious services of the Jehovah's Witnesses differently if they were denied use of the park. The Niemotko case decided that such discrimination was barred by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Fowler v. Rhode Island, 345 U.S. 67, 73 S.Ct. 526 (1953).