Charleston, SC – On July 29, 2021, Charleston City Council passed a restrictive and repressive First Amendment Demonstration Ordinance (1A). It makes protesting in the city without a permit from the Charleston Police Department (CPD) illegal under threat of arrest and jail time. The 1A ordinance is unconstitutional, restrictive and has -resulted in fewer people protesting; even requests for permits have drastically decreased.

Over 150 permits were requested in the year before the ordinance was passed and a little over 200 have been requested in the five years since the ordinance has passed. Legal experts have noted that the ordinance places time, size and location restrictions on demonstrations which create unnecessary hurdles on people’s right to assemble.

For the first two years of the ordinance, it largely remained unchallenged, effectively chilling protest in the city of Charleston. However, this changed on October 5, 2024, during an unpermitted rally where two organizers were charged specifically with violating this ordinance. Yet when the time came for trial, the city quietly dropped the charges. A string of arrests in 2025, using this ordinance as a pretext, have remained in legal limbo and shown that the very institutions that passed this ordinance can't defend it.

Background to First Amendment repression in Charleston

In May of 2020, George Floyd was murdered by Derrick Chauvin of the Minneapolis Police Department sparking historic rebellions across the entire country. This includes Charleston, where the King Street Business District, a tourist hotspot, became a battleground. People filled with rage fought back against police violence and several were arrested, some on federal charges. Many remain incarcerated.

In the aftermath of the uprisings in Charleston, Jamal Sutherland was tasered to death by Al Cannon Detention Center deputies in January of 2021. Sutherland suffered from schizoaffective disorder and refused to attend his bond hearing after being transferred to the jail from a behavioral health facility the night before. Despite being within his legal rights, two detention officers tased him at least ten times, resulting in his homicide. They were later fired but never charged for the crime. On May 13, 2021, the body camera footage of the Jamal Sutherland murder was released. It enraged the people of Charleston, who took to the streets in protest outside Charleston County Solicitor Scarlett Wilson's office a week later to demand she charge the deputies with his murder.

On July 26, 2021, Solicitor Wilson announced criminal charges would not be brought against Sutherland’s murderers. The next day, community members gathered downtown in Marion Square to protest. They attempted to march and were met with police violence, resulting in three arrests. On July 29, 2021, in an emergency session, Charleston City Council passed the repressive and unconstitutional 1A law, which criminalizes protesting without a police permit under threat of arrest. No public comment was allowed, and two council members abstained from the vote. The ordinance effectively halts protests in Charleston.

On October 5, 2024, this all changed with a protest held in Marion Square in response to the Palestinian Youth Movement’s call for a National Day of Action in solidarity with the people of Palestine and against the ongoing genocide. Organizers of the rally, members of the then newly-formed Elbit Out South Carolina (EOSC) Coalition, did not have a permit, nor did they attempt to get one, due in part to the fact that CPD had routinely denied or stalled permits for pro-Palestine protests and marches in the aftermath of Al Aqsa Flood.

EOSC organizers planned to use the rally to announce the kickoff of weekly pickets outside of Elbit Systems America in Ladson, South Carolina. A police liaison with the coalition spoke to officers, who said there were no issues with the gathering as long as it didn’t get out of control. A march was attempted, but under threat of arrest by officers, it did not proceed. The rally rebounded and continued in the park, but when it ended, police targeted two organizers out of the crowd, Chris Tittle and Matt Colburn, and charged them with violation of the 1A ordinance, specifically for being within, “15 feet of a statue or monument.”

No further protests were held in Marion Square moving forward and the two organizers retained legal counsel, entered not guilty pleas and prepared for their day in court. Over a year later, in November 2025, the charges were ultimately dismissed. These charges are the only known instance, since the passing of the ordinance in 2021, in which anyone was charged specifically with “violating First Amendment ordinance.” For example, in January 2025 in Marion Square, a spontaneous protest was organized and attended mostly by Latino youth, in response to Trump's mass deportation program. Over 200 people attended. CPD declared it unlawful under the 1A law and ordered everyone to disperse. As the protesters followed orders, seven people were brutally arrested and charged with “disobeying lawful orders.” The outcome of the cases is unknown.

Later that year, in June 2025, this scenario was repeated after a No Kings Day rally in downtown Charleston where Colburn was arrested during a spontaneous march. CPD officers claimed his use of a bullhorn, or amplified sound, while chanting was illegal under the 1A ordinance. He was subsequently charged with “disorderly conduct” and his megaphone was seized as evidence. The first prosecutor assigned to the case wanted to dismiss the charges, but the CPD refused to drop them. The second prosecutor, Kevin Hales, has offered a guilty plea for time served on more than one occasion, but Colburn and his legal team have consistently refused and demanded a jury trial. On two separate occasions, and only hours after public calls were made to pack the court, the prosecutor filed for a continuation. It has been over 14 months, and Colburn has yet to receive his day in court.

On January 25, 2026, at a protest against the recent ICE killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, a woman named Julia Tucker was arrested by CPD for wearing a keffiyeh over her face. Police cited the 1A ordinance ban on masks at protests as just cause for the arrest, despite ignoring several students in the crowd who also wore medical masks. Charleston was also experiencing an unusually cold front at the time, which had lowered temperatures into the freezing zone over the weekend. The outcome of Tucker’s charge is also unknown.

The recent continuation of Colburn's disorderly conduct charge in August 2026 brought news that the Charleston City Government allegedly reached out to the presiding judge and acting prosecutor Kevin Hales, requesting to push the trial. It appears that the city and municipal courts are not confident these charges will hold up in court. This ordinance has and continues to have a “chilling effect” on First Amendment rights. The police have made at least eleven arrests in less than two years using this ordinance as a pretext and they appear unwilling and unable to defend or try these cases in court, content to let them lay in limbo. The October 2024 arrests were the one and only instance in which charges were pressed specifically citing “violation of First Amendment ordinance.” Every arrest since then has been for standard misdemeanor charges.

Organizers in Charleston plan to continue to push for the repeal of this law. The unpermitted demonstrations on October 5, 2024, January 29, 2025 and June 14, 2025, have put the city of Charleston and CPD in a position in which they have to defend this ordinance in a court of law.

According to Colburn, “the unwillingness to let these cases go to trial suggest that the ordinance is very weak politically and agitation around it could prove to be its downfall, and forcing them to defend the indefensible is not a battle CPD or the city of Charleston wants to fight. But history shows that when people fight, they win, and this win is exactly what the city of Charleston is afraid of.”

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