In 2008, D.C. resident Brooke Oberwetter was arrested and held for several hours by Park Police for dancing inside the Jefferson Memorial with a group of about 20 nerdy libertarian wonk types who had convened for a silent midnight flash mob. The internet was not pleased. But today, a federal appellate panel ruled that the Park Police were justified in hauling Oberwetter off that evening.
Oberwetter had filed suit against the arresting officer, Kenneth Hilliard, in 2009. In the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s opinion on the matter, Judge Thomas B. Griffith wrote that dancing in the memorial is “prohibited because it stands out as a type of performance, creating its own center of attention and distracting from the atmosphere of solemn commemoration that the Regulations are designed to preserve.”
“Outside the Jefferson Memorial, of course, Oberwetter and her friends have always been free to dance to their hearts’ content,” Griffith writes.
It’s actually a somewhat surprising ruling — after all, Oberwetter was represented by Heller attorney Alan Gura and considering that the justice system was actually spending time considering whether the “solemn atmosphere” of a memorial can be intruded on by a bunch of people silently dancing while no one else is there.
The panel’s ruling on the case can be read below.
