The Midvale City Council has voted to allow groups and individuals to walk in its annual Harvest Days Parade by invitation only — a move that follows the appearance of a Confederate group at the event last year.

The policy, approved unanimously by the five-member council Tuesday, is meant to establish the parade as government speech rather than an open public open forum and notes that the city will now bar messages the council views as “inappropriate” for residents and visitors or ones that are “divisive, degrading, or obscene.”

Councilman Dustin Gettel, who told The Salt Lake Tribune in August that he was interested in finding a way to stop the Sons of Confederate Veterans from marching again, said the new policy will better reflect the event’s purpose as a celebration of the city’s community and heritage.

“They have no historical significance in Midvale or Utah or anything,” he said of the group before the vote. “We didn’t fight the Civil War in Utah and certainly not in Midvale.”

Leaders of the Confederate group, which is now known as the Soldier Summit Grays, had applied to be part of this year’s parade, according to Laura Magness, the city’s communications director. She told the council at a recent meeting that the group’s leaders had promised they would not fly the flag again this year, though they will almost certainly not be allowed to march this year under the new rules.

The group did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

In a briefing on the parade policy before the vote on Tuesday, City Attorney Lisa Garner noted that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum that governments can control their own messages — but that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be “potential problems,” including the possibility of a court challenge.

“There’s no way to avoid that,” she told the council. “I believe that this is a very reasonable and appropriate response.”

Councilman Paul Hunt, who voted for the policy Tuesday, had expressed some trepidation over the rules in a recent meeting, noting that the council “took an oath of office to uphold the Constitution” and First Amendment rights of free speech.

“Harvest Days is a celebration of the city of Midvale and the historical significance of the development of Midvale, the area and the past history and the stories as we developed the city of Midvale, things like that. That’s really what Harvest Days is about — especially the parade. So that’s where I could arrive at that decision” to support the policy change, he said.

Article continues below

Gettel, though, told The Tribune that the case law is clear, and he doesn’t believe the new rules will trample anyone’s right to free speech.

“We’re not saying they don’t have the right to exist,” he said of the Confederate group. “They have the right to protest. If they want to show up at the parade as some sort of peaceful protest, they have every constitutional right to do so. What I’ve argued the whole time is there’s no constitutional right to participate in a city’s parade. Otherwise, parades would just be free-for-alls.”

The Sons of Confederate Veterans has marched in Utah with Confederate flags in the past, including in the Draper Days Parade in July 2017 and in the Herriman Days Parade in 2015. The Herriman parade entry was sandwiched between a float carrying Miss Bluffdale, a black woman, and former Rep. Mia Love, the first black female Republican member of Congress. Herriman’s parade committee later apologized to residents.