Rapper's hologram performance is shut down; is it a First Amendment violation?
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The CEO of Hologram USA is claiming the city of Hammond, Indiana, violated the First Amendment when it shut down a performance by rapper Chief Keef minutes after it began on Saturday.
Chief Keef didn’t appear in person at his “Stop the Killing” concert, held to benefit a slain rapper and the 13-month-old child who was killed by a car apparently fleeing the scene, report the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times. Instead, he appeared by hologram, a move that helped him avoid legal problems in the Midwest, where he has two outstanding warrants for failure to pay child support.
Chief Keef was talking about stopping violence when the power was cut off. Police rushed the stage and ordered audience members to leave, the Tribune account says.
Chief Keef has in the past rapped about his gang ties, leading the office of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to deem him a “significant safety risk.” The mayor’s objections had led a private venue in Chicago to cancel Chief Keef’s show last weekend.
Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. told the New York Times that all of the other acts at the Craze Fest hip hop festival had been vetted because the event was being held at a public park.
“I know nothing about Chief Keef,” McDermott told the newspaper. “All I’d heard was he has a lot of songs about gangs and shooting people—a history that’s anti-cop, pro-gang and pro-drug use. He’s been basically outlawed in Chicago, and we’re not going to let you circumvent Mayor Emanuel by going next door.”
Alki David, chief executive of Hologram USA, threatened a lawsuit. “This was a legal event and there was no justification to shut it down besides your glaring disregard for the First Amendment right to free speech,” he said, addressing Hammond’s mayor and police chief.
University of California law professor Eugene Volokh agrees with David on the First Amendment issue. The concert apparently took place in a public park, where the government can impose content-neutral restrictions on speech, but can’t discriminate based on viewpoint, he writes at his blog, the Volokh Conspiracy.
Volokh says a June U.S. Supreme Court decision involving Texas’ rejection of a specialty license plate doesn’t change his view. The decision found no First Amendment violation in Texas’ rejection of the Confederate flag plate because the specialty plates convey government speech. The decision, Walker v. Sons of Confederate Veterans, recognized that parks continue to be a traditional public forum where the government does not express its own message, Volokh said.
“Unless I’m missing something here, then, this is a pretty clear First Amendment violation on the part of the City of Hammond,” Volokh wrote.
