Protesters on Tuesday shut down a Minnesota House hearing on a bill that would hold demonstrators financially liable for police response costs, if their protests were deemed illegal or a nuisance in court.

While all but one speaker decried the bill as an attempt to intimidate protesters and curb First Amendment rights, in the end the bill passed out of the committee with a 9-6 split along party lines — with every Republican on the committee voting for it, and every Democrat against.

The bill’s 27 authors, all Republicans including House Speaker Kurt Daudt, also include eight members of the committee to which it was referred: the House public safety committee, chaired by Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Vernon Center, who is also listed as an author.

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The political division was not lost on Cathy Jones, vice president of the Minneapolis NAACP, who told committee members the bill was a “shameful Republican response to the Black Lives Matter movement in Minnesota.”

Rep. Nick Zerwas, R-Elk River, the bill’s primary author and sole person to argue in its favor during the hearing, cast it as a response to recent protester shutdowns of streets and highways.

“I think if you’re convicted of a crime where you intentionally inflict as much expense and cost upon a community as possible, you ought to get a bill. It should not be property tax payers’ responsibility to cover for your illegal behavior,” Zerwas said.

Zerwas claimed that in the last 18 months, the cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul and Bloomington have racked up $2.5 million in costs responding to protests. The numbers couldn’t be immediately verified, but during the hearing Zerwas cited media reports and his own data practice requests.

Zerwas’ bill states that those convicted of participating in an unlawful assembly or breaking public nuisance laws can be sued by government units, like cities or the state, for public safety costs “incurred for the purpose of responding.”

When pressed by Democratic committee members as to how expansive those penalties should be, Zerwas said he believed people should only be liable for the costs of their arrest.

Multiple speakers brought up the protest record of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — with one noting: “The irony does not escape me that this is being considered in a building that is located on Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard.”

“Is there anyone here today who honestly thinks that justice would have been better served if the police in Selma, Alabama, had charged poor African-Americans thousands of dollars in civil penalties above and beyond their statutory fines?” asked speaker Ken Geisen. “That Dr. King should have asked his followers to stand in a ditch so as not to inconvenience anyone because they didn’t have a permit?”

Teresa Nelson, legal director for the ACLU of Minnesota, said she believed the law, if passed, would be found unconstitutional, citing a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision in which a county in Georgia attempted to get reimbursed for costs after 66 white nationalists were arrested for parading in a counterprotest without a permit.

Other speakers saw huge potential for governmental abuse and overreach — with one interpreting the statute to say that any single person involved in a large protest, later deemed illegal, could potentially be sued to recover the entire cost of a city’s public safety response. Leaders could be targeted, and average people would find it difficult to tell in advance what would be defined as unlawful, others argued.

Later, Zerwas — often as animated and impassioned as those attacking his bill — said of recent protests, “We have a ‘go-to’ move of blocking airports so people can’t leave town on Thanksgiving weekend. … We have a go-to move of shutting down freeways and stopping ambulances … of blocking light rail transit.”

While Republican committee members stayed silent during the hearing, several DFL members attacked the bill — some on a personal level.

Rep. Debra Hilstrom, DFL-Brooklyn Center, grew visibly angry when she spoke of how her grandfather, who participated in a Teamster strike at the University of Minnesota in 1939, was put in federal prison for 18 months, under an anti-protest law later deemed unconstitutional.

“Members, we have come a long long way in Minnesota giving people the right to stand up for their rights, and it has been a long time that the government has attempted to stop that. … We should not go back. We should not go back.”

Hilstrom asked Zerwas whether he had any letters of support from municipalities seeking remuneration, to which Zerwas replied, he’d been “hearing from property owners.”

“If you were interested in simply seeking restitution for local communities when someone committed a crime, we would not simply be talking about freedom of speech here. We would be talking about all kinds of crime. That is not what we have, here,” Hilstrom said.

Zerwas argued there was precedent in Minnesota law, citing a statute that allowed government units to sue those who intentionally started forest fires for public safety response costs.

Speaker Hunter Cantrell responded, “A man who starts an arson is not the same as protesters who are absolutely trying to make a statement that they do not have a viable route for recourse in our society.” Related Articles McConnell vows quick vote on next justice; Biden says wait

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By the end of the hearing, which took place in the House civil law and data practices policy committee, its chair, Peggy Scott, R-Andover, attempted to move on to a second bill scheduled for the day.

But within a minute, those in the audience began shouting, “If we don’t get no justice, they don’t get no peace!” and “Shame!” and packed the aisles of the hearing room.

“If you’re planning to leave, please do it peacefully so we can get on with our business,” Scott replied, but she gaveled the meeting to a close seconds later.