Protest planned at Minnesota mall on busy day

A Minnesota judge says she doesn’t have the power to stop a protest by Black Lives Matter at the Mall of America.

The mall sought a restraining order after the group said last week it planned a return protest at the mall, where about 1,500 people protested last December over the deaths of black men in police-involved incidents in NY and Missouri.

However, she denied its request to order the organizers to alert others on social media that the protest is canceled. The organizers’ attorney argued during a Monday hearing that those demands were clearly unconstitutional.

The judge’s ruling made it clear that, under Minnesota law and prior court decisions, protesters have no First Amendment right to protest on the Mall’s private property, saying that “established precedent is that owners of privately-held shopping malls, such as the MOA, may exercise their rights of possession and control over their private property to exclude from their private property political demonstrators, like the individual defendants here, who wish to engage in speech and expressive conduct on private property”. She pointed out that the mall is privately-owned and not a public space.

With the judge’s limited ruling, it’s unclear what additional steps the mall may take to curtail the protest.

Bloomington police have not said what security measures the mall may put in place.

Kandace Montgomery, one of three organizers barred by the judge’s order, says the group isn’t deterred by the ban.

Organizers for Black Lives Matter say the demonstration scheduled for 1 p.m. on Wednesday will go on as planned. They also want to ramp up the pressure on investigators to release video of the shooting. The shooting is now being investigated by state and federal authorities.

“We are a leader-full organization”.

“Not speaking would be the Mall winning, yet again, as corporations and police departments and the institutions collude with one another to silence us”, she said.

Lawyers for the nation’s largest mall had requested a temporary restraining order to prevent the protest in hopes of avoiding a repeat of the massive demonstration that disrupted business and closed stores in the mall a year ago.

Last year’s protest by BLM caused an estimated 24,000 people to bypass shopping at the mall, according to traffic statistics in court documents filed by the mall.

Black Lives Matter activists have claimed they will rally in spite of the injunction.