Lawyer for Clermont County transparency advocate: Restraining order 'unconstitutional'

Update, Sept. 14: Calling a civil protection order filed against his client “unconstitutional” under the First Amendment, attorney for a Clermont County man asked the court to dismiss the action.

In the memorandum accompanying the request, attorney Matthew Miller-Novak said the action is “about an elected official abusing a civil protection order to silence a taxpayer from criticizing his conduct as an elected official.”

Miller-Novak is referencing the protection order filed by Clermont County Commissioner David Uible against government transparency advocate Christopher Hicks.

“Hicks has done nothing more than exercise his First Amendment rights to state grievances about a public official,” according to the memorandum.

Citing other cases, the memorandum states that if Uible feels defamed then “he must pony up and file a defamation claim where he must prove Hicks’ statements were falsely made with actual malice.”

The request for dismissal was filed in the Clermont County Court of Common Pleas on Sept. 8.

Previous reporting: A Clermont County commissioner has received a protection order against a critic resident who the commissioner says seemed "delusional" and "textbook psychotic."

Clermont County Commissioner David Uible sought protection from Union Township resident Christopher Hicks, a visible and highly engaged government transparency advocate.

As a county commissioner, "I am very concerned about my welfare with this man who seems delusional and a textbook psychotic,” Uible wrote in his request filed in Clermont County Common Pleas Court.

The order was signed in late August by Common Pleas Judge Richard Ferenc. It says Hicks "shall not enter the third floor of the Clermont County Administration Building" and that he must stay 500 feet away from Uible.

Over the past few months, Hicks has challenged Uible and the other county commissioners for full disclosure of plans to enact an additional 1 percent hotel tax to pay for construction, improvements, and maintenance of an FC Cincinnati practice facility within Clermont County.

More: Why is the future FC Cincinnati practice facility so mysterious? 'Nature of the business,' official says

The Clermont County Convention and Visitors Bureau is the organization behind the sports facility push. Uible is on the CVB’s executive board, something Hicks has publicly called a conflict of interest.

In the request for the order, Uible wrote that Hicks attacks him daily via “emails, YouTube videos and his regular appearances at our BCC meetings when he badgers…me with questions, has me feeling very vulnerable, threatened and truly fearful of what forms of harassment, intimidation or even violence he will use next.”

Hicks, who was recently escorted from a commissioners meeting after asking to read a statement into the meeting minutes, said he’s looking forward to his court date with Uible.

“I am nothing more than a citizen exercising my First Amendment rights to address grievances with government officials,” Hicks said. “If we’ve reached a period when citizens doing a grievance results in protective orders, that’s scary to me.”

A hearing will be held in the Clermont County Court of Common Pleas before Magistrate Osten Darp on Monday, Oct. 2 after a request for a continuance was filed by Hicks’s attorney Matt Miller-Novak.