Beverly Hills Protests

“Last summer in the midst of the George Floyd protests, I organized two dozen lawyers to defend protesters who were arrested in Beverly Hills for not remaining *silent* during a peaceful public protest. A violation of an emergency city ordinance. They were booked and stuffed together in jail cells for over 16 hours and charged with misdemeanors.

Our strategy was to ask the court to declare the law unconstitutional. And yesterday that’s exactly what happened.

I am the one whose quote made it into the LA Times article, but this was an enormous group effort from volunteer attorneys. I’m just the guy who put the smartest people I could find together in a (virtual) room.

And we all must give all praise and glory to Bess Stiffelman and Jeff Douglas who did the heavy lifting in drafting the briefs and brilliantly arguing our position to the court.

The big civil rights orgs didn’t think our ad hoc group of rando criminal defense lawyers would win. Bess and Jeff are the reason we proved them wrong, why laws like this won’t be passed anymore, and why 25 people had their cases dismissed.

Thank you again to everyone who stepped up to make this happen. LA. What a town.” Jerod Gunsberg

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-19/judge-finds-law-beverly-hills-used-to-charge-protesters-is-unconstitutional?fbclid=IwAR0Xwx5A6sCqiu6qw1MMo2r40Vdwg0sB82RM4KRAjp_XOGo9vo5boe4CuaI