By Austin Wright

NORFOLK

A local Christian group has a right to free speech but they “don’t have to shout,” a federal judge in Norfolk said Tuesday when he denied the group’s request to display a 12-foot-tall cross at a Fourth of July celebration in a Chesapeake city park.

Last year city employees asked Christian Rights Ministries to remove the cross from the celebration at Lakeside Park following a parade. The group alleges that city employees said the cross was “too blatantly Christian,” but the employees said during Tuesday’s court hearing that they had the cross removed for safety reasons.

In April, Ministries’ founder Steve Taylor filed a federal civil rights suit against Chesapeake and asked for an injunction to force the city to allow the cross at this year’s celebration.

Taylor did not apply for a booth at this year’s celebration, saying new regulations banning objects taller than 8 feet convinced him the effort was futile.

Two city employees testified that they recommended height limitations to event organizers because of safety concerns. They were concerned that tall objects, like the cross, could fall and hurt someone.

Following several hours of testimony, U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar said Chesapeake’s new height restriction is justified, and he denied the injunction request.

However, Doumar said, the group’s civil rights suit may have merit because one of the new regulations requires city officials to judge the appropriateness of celebration displays.

Taylor said the religious group cannot communicate its message effectively without the cross.

Jonathan Scruggs, the group’s lawyer, said the ministries will to seek nominal damages and a declaration of wrongdoing from the city.

“We’re doing this to validate the violation of past rights,” said Scruggs, who works for the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative response to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Jeffrey Salb, the city’s attorney, said he’s happy the decades-old Fourth of July celebration will go on unaffected, and noted that other Christian groups have participated in the celebration without incident.

“The city has no objection to crosses,” he said. “There’s a reasonable and rational basis for height limitations based on safety concerns.”

The suit names the city of Chesapeake as a defendant, along with several employees: Robert Clifton, Chesapeake’s director of parks and recreation; Donna Hill, Chesapeake’s recreation superintendent; and Brenda Johnson, the chairwoman of the Fourth of July celebration.

In his testimony, Taylor said that at last year’s celebration the cross was allowed in the parade, but he said Hill and Johnson told him to remove it from Lakeside Park or the police would remove it for him.

A Ministries member carried the cross on his back to the front of the courthouse on Tuesday morning, and then placed it in the back of the courtroom. During the hearing, two defense attorneys held the cross up in front of the judge.

“This is not suppression of speech — it’s clearly a case of how loud that speech can be,” Doumar said. “I don’t see anything wrong with the 8-foot regulation.”

Austin Wright, (757) 446-2667, austin.wright@pilotonline.com