Organizers sue City of Aurora, claim unconstitutional interference with pride parade

AURORA, Ill. (CBS) — Aurora Pride filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Aurora and its police chief this week, accusing the city of “wreaking havoc” on the west suburban city’s LGBTQ+ pride parade last year over the “whims” of some police officers who disagreed with the organizers’ views.

As CBS 2’s Marissa Perlman reported Wednesday night, the Aurora Pride Parade went on without a hitch in June.

“I think was as big as 2019, or close,” said Aurora Pride president Gwyn Ciesla.

But getting there was not exactly straightforward.

“We just sort of figured we’d put on a parade on – but here we are,” Ciesla said.

The suit claimed the vagueness of the Aurora Special Events Ordinance allowed the city to interfere with the parade in a way that violated organizers’ First Amendment rights. Specifically, the lawsuit said Aurora Pride’s choice not to allow police officers to march in uniform was a constitutionally protected message with which the city interfered.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court Tuesday, and named the City of Aurora, Chief of Police Keith Cross, and city Community Events Coordinator Mike Nelson as defendants.

In May of last year, organizers for the parade made the decision that law enforcement officers would be allowed to participate – but without weapons, uniforms, or individual vehicles. Parade organizers in late May issued a news release reading in part, “many members of the community feel uneasy in the presence of official law enforcement vehicles, as well as uniformed officers, due to negative experiences they themselves or someone they know have had.”

“Not wearing those uniforms was a way police could participate and then say to the community, you know, ‘We’re one of you,'” Ciesla said.

The organizers did allow uniformed police officers during the 2018 and 2019 pride parades in Aurora. But they said in 2022, the climate had shifted – and community members were more strained than they were three years earlier.

Aurora Pride called the request to keep uniformed officers out of the parade “a meaningful opportunity to improve community engagement and build trust.” But as a result of that decision, Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin said he would not be participating in the parade, and also announced the City of Aurora would no longer have a float in the parade.

“If my officers aren’t allowed to march in that parade proudly, wearing their uniforms and their weapons, I will not be a part of that parade,” Irvin said in June of last year.

The City of Aurora then revoked the permit for the parade, citing safety concerns. City officials said they don’t have enough officers to provide security. Parade organizers were told it was on them to recruit the 20 officers needed from other jurisdictions, but they came up short. 

The Aurora Police Department said at the time that when police officers are needed privately-run special event, the officers are assigned as an extra job outside their regular duties Extra jobs and overtime are voluntary, and city cannot force any officers to work for the parade, Aurora police said.

As it was, the Aurora Police Department said it had already been struggling to get officers to work overtime to fill staff shortages, sick calls, and vacation time with overtime – while also ensuring there were enough officers on patrol to ensure public safety in the city, police said last year – adding that fewer officers wanted to work extra shifts than in the past.

But in the lawsuit, Aurora Pride claimed that the lack of officers and the revocation of the permit was not unrelated to the earlier controversy. Part of the problem was that a “substantial number of officers” who had signed up to work the parade decided not to do so, “because they disagreed with Aurora Pride’s decisions about the parade content.”

“It’s so easy for a parade to be on the brink of cancellation because a number of police officers decided that it wasn’t acceptable to them personally,” said ACLU senior attorney Rebecca Glenberg. “That’s extremely dangerous for the freedom of speech.”

Aurora Pride also took issue with the city placing the onus on parade organizers to find enough police officers to maintain security for the parade, given that “Aurora Pride had no power or authority to ‘retain’ or otherwise compel APD officers to show up for work, and were barred from retaining private security to replace most police functions.”

The permit was later reinstated, and the parade did go ahead in June of last year. But Aurora Pride insinuated in the lawsuit that the city was still out to stick it to organizers.

“Without Aurora Pride’s consent or authorization, however, the City resolved the policing issue by offering ‘triple time’ wages to the additional officers, then forwarding the bill to Aurora Pride,” the lawsuit said.

“They allowed the parade to go forward, but they said, ‘We’re going to charge you for the fact that we have to pay our officers more because they don’t like your speech,'” said Glenberg.

The lawsuit accused the City of Aurora of violating Aurora Pride’s First Amendment rights to free speech or assembly “by revoking its permit for reasons that Aurora Pride did not cause and was powerless to remedy, then billing Aurora Pride thousands of dollars to ‘fix’ a problem of Defendants’ own creation.

“Worse,” the lawsuit continued, “the Defendants’ harmful actions were content-driven; they came about as a result of APD officers’ disagreement with Aurora Pride’s message.”

The lawsuit said the city was able to undertake “unconstitutional actions” because the Aurora Special Events Ordinance does not have clear rules and allows local officials to discriminate against special event organizers based on the content of the organizers’ speech.

Aurora Pride’s breakdown of the controversy

Aurora only started holding its own Pride Parade since 2018 – and the parade was not held in 2020 or 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Aurora Pride applied successfully for a permit for the 2022 parade in January of last year, the lawsuit said.

In April of last year, some LGBTQ police officers from Aurora and Elgin asked to participate as they had in past years – and asked if Aurora Pride has any concern about “anti-police sentiment” at the event, the lawsuit said.

“The group discussed Pride’s roots in protests against police brutality toward the LGBTQ community, the significant presence of armed, uniformed police along the parade route, complaints from community members during past parades about the volume of uniformed police presence, and the fact that many members of the LGBTQ community and other marginalized communities had suffered traumatic encounters with police,” the lawsuit said.

Thus, parade organizers decided police officers could march, but only without their uniforms or official vehicles, the lawsuit said.

The officers who had wanted to take part did not agree with the decision, but organizers said they were not being excluded – and they could find other ways to identify themselves as police officers, the lawsuit said.

The issue was discussed, and Aurora Pride thought the matter had been resolved in May of last year, the lawsuit said.

But on May 20, state Sen. Linda Holmes (D-Aurora) expressed displeasure with the way Aurora was handling the issue of police officers in the parade – and Aurora Pride also got an inquiry about it from a reporter, the lawsuit said.

Aurora Pride then issued a news release explaining its decision, the lawsuit said. Soon afterward, Mayor Irvin – who was running in the Republican primary for Illinois governor at the time – issued a letter expressing his own displeasure with parade organizers’ request to the LGBTQ officers, the lawsuit said.

On May 27, Aurora Pride held a meeting with Community Events Coordinator Nelson and an Aurora police representative – at which the city and police did not indicate any staffing issues, the lawsuit said. The same day, Mayor Irvin again took issue with the policy on officer in the parade and said he would “share the City’s plan of action next week,” the lawsuit said.

This prompted the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois to send Irvin a letter explaining that Aurora Pride’s choice to ask officers not to march in uniform was protected by the First Amendment. The ACLU warned that acts such as “revoking or altering Aurora Pride’s permit,” “raising Aurora Pride’s expenses,” or any other official action against Aurora Pride would amount to unconstitutional retaliation, the lawsuit said.

On May 31, Irvin made his announcement that he and the city were withdrawing from participation the parade over the police issue, the lawsuit said. Irvin also called the former chairman of Individual Aurora, Chuck Adams, and tried to get him to persuade Aurora Pride to change its policy on officer participation, the lawsuit said.

“Irvin warned Adams that he understood that the APD officers who were scheduled to provide security for the parade were also upset about Aurora Pride’s policy,” the suit said.

Also on May 31, Aurora Pride was told the city was calling a meeting the next day with Aurora Pride, Chief Cross, Nelson, and other city representatives for the next day. At that meeting, the city told Aurora Pride it had determined 56 officers for security and law enforcement at the parade – and the Aurora Police Department was 11 short, the lawsuit said.

“No one explained how APD arrived at the number 56 or why APD had not found the necessary officers,” the lawsuit said.

Aurora Pride believes the city was “short” officers because many had refused to be involved due to the controversy about officers participating in uniform, the lawsuit said.

On June 3, the city then told Aurora Pride that even more officers were declining to work the event, and there were now 22 fewer than the number needed, the suit said. Aurora police suggested that Aurora Pride ask police departments from other jurisdictions to send officers – and rejected the idea of private security making up the difference, the suit said.

Aurora police tried to get police officers from other municipalities on the short notice the city had provided, the suit said. Three officers from Highland Park and two from the Kane County Sheriff’s office agreed to come on, but that was not enough to cover the shortfall, the suit said.

On June 7, Nelson issued a letter saying the permit for the parade was going to be revoked the next day, the lawsuit said.

The letter said the reason was Aurora Pride had failed to “retain the requisite number of law enforcement officers to close the streets, provide for traffic control, and to manage the crowds along the parade route you have designated.” The city called this a “threat to the public health and safety,” the suit said.

Aurora Pride was told it could appeal the decision, and was invited to “correct” its violation by finding 18 more officers by the next day, the lawsuit said.

The cancellation was the subject of extensive news coverage. Many reporters were also in attendance for a June 9 administrative hearing on Aurora Pride’s appeal of the cancellation.

At the hearing, Aurora Pride president Ciesla testified that the revocation of the permit, and the process in the Special Events Ordinance, gave Aurora police a “heckler’s veto” over the message of the parade, the lawsuit said.

The city only called one witness – police Lt. Chris Whitfield – who said the city had been on track to staff the parade fully until officers started dropping out of their commitments, the lawsuit said.

Whitfield testified that “the Pride Parade obviously is different from other parades due to politicization of the – you know, everything going on with Roe versus Wade that’s going on right now, pro-life, pro-choice,” the lawsuit said.

The city’s counsel also raised safety concerns and argued: “There are crazies on both sides of the aisle out there. And the enormity of the risk that inheres in an inadequately policed parade with a lot of people and a lot of views – a lot of viewpoints being expressed is an unacceptable risk,” the lawsuit said.

A hearing officer ruled the city had the right to revoke the permit.

But that same day, the City of Aurora relented and granted the permit. On June 12, the parade went ahead.

However, it turned out the city had officers triple overtime pay to persuade them to work the parade, the suit said. The city did not tell Aurora Pride about this, but on June 28, Aurora Pride got a bill for $40,427,93 – nearly double the estimate of $21,607.44 that Aurora Pride had expected to need to pay the city for policing, the suit said.

This was on top of the Highland Park and Kane County officers whom Aurora Pride recruited at a cost of more than $3,000 altogether, the suit said.

The invoice remains pending as the parties disagree. Meanwhile, Aurora Pride has now submitted an application for a permit for its 2023 parade, the suit said.

The lawsuit said the vague wording of the Aurora Special Events Ordinance violates Aurora Pride’s First Amendment rights in that it allowed the city to impose “unreasonable obstacles to Aurora Pride’s right to free speech in a public forum.”

The suit seeks a declaration that the revocation of the parade permit and the city’s actions were unconstitutional, and called for a court to bar the city from enforcing its Special Events Ordinance.

The lawsuit also called for compensatory and nominal damage against the city. The ACLU plans to fight the $20,000 overtime bill.

The suit was filed by attorney Theodore Scarborough of Sidley Austin LLP, and Rebecca Glenberg and Kevin Fee of the Roger Baldwin Foundation of ACLU Inc.

We reached out to the mayor and the City of Aurora, but we are told no one will comment on pending litigation.