Judge throws out mass Occupy Chicago arrests as unconstitutional

City's overnight park curfew violates First Amendment, ruling says

Chicago Tribune, David Heinzmann, September 28, 2012

More than 300 people were arrested in
 the Grant Park demonstrations early in
the morning on Oct. 16 and Oct. 23.
(Brent Lewis, For the Chicago Tribune)

The mass arrests of Occupy Chicago demonstrators that city leaders praised as a model for respecting protesters' rights were ruled unconstitutional Thursday by a Cook County judge who also declared that the city's overnight park curfew violates the First Amendment.

The city singled out the Occupy demonstrators for violating the park's 11 p.m. curfew on two consecutive weekends in October 2011, arresting hundreds of people, but made no arrests when 500,000 people stayed past the curfew at the 2008 election night rally for President Barack Obama "that electrified the world," Associate Judge Thomas M. Donnelly wrote.

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