The Aurora Pride organization, which organizes the annual Pride Parade in Illinois’ second largest city, is suing the city of Aurora, claiming the city improperly stuck them with a bill for triple time wages for police officers assigned to the parade, after parade organizers refused to allow LGBTQ police officers to march in the parade in uniform.
On Jan. 17, the Aurora Pride organization filed suit in federal court against the city.
The lawsuit accuses the city of “unconstitutional actions against Aurora Pride based on the content and viewpoint of Aurora Pride’s protected speech” and using a city “Special Events Ordinance … to wreak havoc on the 2022 Aurora Pride Parade based on the whims of police officers who disagreed with Aurora Pride’s constitutionally protected message,” opposing police.
The lawsuit takes particular aim at the ordinance, asking the court to declare it unconstitutional.
The controversy centers on the city’s alleged handling of the Aurora Pride Parade last summer.
According to the complaint, Aurora Pride received a permit from the city to hold the annual parade for the first time since 2019, before the parade was shut down for two years during the period Covid pandemic restrictions.
Under the permit agreement, Aurora Pride agreed to pay about $21,600 to compensate the city for the Aurora Police officers required to provide security for the event and facilitate traffic flow, among other policing needs.
The month before the permit was issued, Aurora Pride had denied a request from LGBTQ police officers from Aurora and Elgin to participate in the parade.
However, parade organizers refused their request to march in uniform, noting anti-police sentiment among organizers and many who would attend the parade. In the complaint, they particularly cited concern “among many members of the LGBTQ community and other marginalized communities” who “had suffered traumatic encounters with police.”
The parade organizers offered to allow the officers to march in the parade, but not in uniform.
While Aurora Pride “considered the matter resolved as of early May 2022,” controversy erupted around that decision on May 20, when State Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Aurora, expressed her displeasure with the decision, and took the issue to the public in the press.
Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, who was then seeking the Republican nomination for governor in Illinois, then particularly took up the issue and rebuffed Aurora Pride’s attempts to explain the decision, saying he and Aurora Police officers who would provide security for the event were equally upset concerning Aurora Pride’s position.
He said he was withdrawing the city’s official participation in the event.
On June 1, the city informed Aurora Pride that the city did not have enough officers to assign to the parade. Aurora Pride asserted in its complaint officers had refused to work the event because of Aurora Pride’s position against police.
The city revoked the permit on June 7, citing “Aurora Pride’s ‘failure to retain the requisite number of law enforcement officers to close the streets, provide for traffic control, and to manage the crowds along the parade route…”
Ultimately, the city relented, and allowed the parade to go forward on June 12. However, the city then handed Aurora Pride a bill for $40,427 to pay the police officers who were promised “triple time” wages to work the event.
The lawsuit asserts the city government unconstitutionally supported the Aurora Police officers’ attempts to shut down the parade, or at a minimum, secure higher wages for themselves, at the expense of Aurora Pride, in retaliation for Aurora Pride’s speech against police.
They assert the controversy demonstrates the city’s Special Events Ordinance, which governs the issuance of such permits, does not include “sufficient safeguards to prevent government actors from taking arbitrary or discriminatory actions … over free speech and assembly in Aurora’s public spaces.”
Aurora Pride claims the ordinance unconstitutionally allows city officials to exercise viewpoint discrimination against those seeking event permits for speech city officials disapprove of, and to impose various additional costs and other allegedly unreasonable burdens on event organizers, should city officials choose.
The lawsuit asks the court to declare the ordinance unconstitutional, and to bar the city from enforcing its ordinance against Aurora Pride in 2023.
They are also seeking an order directing the city to pay unspecified compensatory and nominal damages, “for violating Aurora Pride’s constitutional rights,” plus attorney fees.
Aurora Pride is represented by attorneys Theodore R. Scarborough and Eris S. Mattson, of the firm of Sidley Austin, of Chicago, and Rebecca K. Glenberg and Kevin M. Fee Jr., of the Roger Baldwin Foundation of ACLU, of Chicago.