LDF Asks Supreme Court to Reverse ALA Decision Against Rev. Shuttlesworth

    14> 
President 

Hon, Francis E. Rivers PRESS RELEASE Director-Counsel egal efense lund deck Crsmabees : NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. Bit, PebeRactn ‘ 10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * JUdson 6.8397 MIGHT NUMBER 212 

FOR RELEASE 

Argument: Nov. 14 or 18, 1968 

LDF ASKS SUPREME COURT 
TO REVERSE ALA. DECISION 
AGAINST REV. SHUTTLESWORTH 

1,500 Other Demonstrators Also Affected 

WASHINGTON---The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked today to review and reverse an Alabama Supreme Court ruling against the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth. 

The Court is asked to decide whether Rev. Shuttlesworth and 1500 Birmingham civil rights demonstrators can be constitutionally convicted for parading without a permit for their Easter week marches of 1963 | in Birmingham. 
| 

Jack Greenberg, director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is arguing that Rev. Shuttlesworth did not have to secure a permit because the parade ordinance on its face violated the Constitution. 

Rev. Shuttlesworth, the LDF maintains, was entitled to ignore the permit requirement "because its grant of overbroad discretionary licensing power rendered it patently offensive to the First and Fourteenth Amendments." 

Moreover, Mr. Greenberg adds, if he had applied for a permit and it had been denied, "there were no Alabama procedures for effective and timely administrative decision-making and judicial review." 

Finally, the LDF maintains, the ordinance speaks of "parade" on the "streets." There was no way Rev. Shuttlesworth could have known that he needed a permit to lead 52 persons on a walk on the sidewalks. 

The lawyers note in their brief that the “attitude of the city administration in general and the police commissioner in particular" was hostile towards Rev. Shuttlesworth and his activities. 

Prior to the Negro protest demonstrations in the spring of 1963, Birmingham officials did not issue permits for walking on the sidewalk. 
“The police did not usually arrest persons for walking on the sidewalks; when they did, the courts did not sustain such convictions," the LDF brief adds. 

LDF attorneys predict that, under the ordinance as applied to Shuttlesworth, Birmingham “football fans on their way to the stadium without a parade permit risk prosecution under ordinance 1159, should city authorities choose so vigorously to protect the sidewalks of Birmingham." 

Attorneys joining Mr. Greenberg in the case are James M. Nabri*, III, Norman C. Amaker, and Melvyn Zarr of New York City; Charles Stephen Ralston of San Francisco; Anthony G. Amsterdam of Philadelphia, and Arthur D. Shores and Orzell Billingsley, Jr. of Birmingham. 

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NOTE: The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is a Separate and distinct organization from the NAACP. Its correct desig- nation is NAACP Legal Defense and Educa Lonal Fund, Inc., which is shortened to LDF. 
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