The Alamance County Sheriff’s office cannot prohibit protests at the courthouse Confederate monument, and demonstrators cannot be arrested for swearing at deputies, under a court settlement finalized Tuesday.
The NAACP and demonstrators sued the City of Graham, Alamance County commissioners, and Alamance Sheriff Terry Johnson in federal court last year over limits on protests outside the courthouse and around the Confederate monument. The settlement settles the lawsuit and says demonstrators are allowed in areas that the Sheriff’s Office made off limits last summer.
Graham repealed its ordinance, which strictly limited protests, soon after the lawsuit was filed.
“We are happy to have negotiated this settlement agreement for racial justice demonstrators who were denied their First Amendment rights by the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office, but if law enforcement officials had followed the U.S. Constitution this settlement would not have been needed in the first place, Elizabeth Haddix, managing attorney for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement.