Attorneys representing the Jewish Voice for Peace South Florida announced Wednesday they are filing a lawsuit against the City of Miami Beach and top officials for restricting their right to protest.
At a news conference Wednesday morning outside Miami Beach City Hall, the group said it has been repeatedly barred from protesting outside the Miami Beach Convention Center.
Named in the lawsuit are Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner and Miami Beach Commissioner David Suarez.
The activists say that last March the city commission passed an ordinance restricting the right to protest following an earlier protest in front of the Miami Beach Convention Center during Art Basel to protest "Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people of Gaza."
The activists say that Jewish Voice for Peace South Florida has been barred from protesting outside the convention center by Miami Beach police "in violation of their constitutionally protected right of free speech."
“Given the hostility that the Mayor and Commissioner Suarez have expressed to JVP’s pro-Palestine messaging, it is clear that the reason JVP was kept from the Convention Center sidewalks was that hostility," Katherine Giannamore, a member of the legal team representing the activist group, said in a statement.
READ MORE: After pro-Palestinian events, protesters will face new restrictions in Miami Beach
The plaintiffs are asking a federal judge to "declare the anti-protest ordinance and the actions of the Miami Beach Police Department unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment rights of JVP South Florida and its members."
“The First Amendment protects the right to protest in public places, including public sidewalks," said Alan Levine, who also part of the activist group's legal team.
“The members of Jewish Voice for Peace South Florida have a right to protest not just on any public sidewalk in Miami Beach, but they have a right to stand on those sidewalks where they are able to convey their message to their intended audience, rather than confined to isolated sidewalks at the choosing of the police,” Levine added.
JVP activists have repeatedly called for the federal government to "stop funding and supporting Israel’s genocide and starvation campaign" by ending military assistance to Israel.
More than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed in the nearly two-year war in the Gaza Strip, according to health officials in Gaza, as Hamas and Israel reiterated their incompatible demands for ending the fighting sparked by the militant group’s 2023 attack.
The Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 people in their attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Most have since been released in ceasefires or other agreements.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
