Supreme Court rejects case of woman ejected from Bush speech

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court turned down a lawsuit today against aides to former President George W. Bush for having ejected a Colorado woman from one of his public speeches because her car had a bumper sticker that said "No More Blood for Oil."

By a 7-2 vote, the court let stand a ruling that held the president is free to select his audience at public speeches and to have his aides remove persons who may disagree with him.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented, saying the Constitution does not permit officials to exclude persons simply "for holding discordant views."

The Bush White House had a policy of excluding dissidents and protesters from the president's public appearances. In several lawsuits that arose, aides said they wanted to prevent critics from disrupting his speeches.

In the Colorado case, however, there was no allegation that Leslie Weise, a clean-energy consultant, had protested or threatened the president. She had obtained a ticket to an event in Denver in 2005 where the president was due to speak about Social Security. But when aides to Bush learned of the bumper sticker on her car, they had her removed from her seat and escorted away.

She later sued Michael Casper and another official who made the decision to remove her. They admitted afterward that the bumper sticker was the basis for their action.

A second person, Alex Young, was tossed out of the Bush speech and joined the lawsuit.

But a federal judge in Denver and the U.S. court of appeals there ruled that excluding the pair did not violate the 1st Amendment. "President Bush had the right, at his own speech, to ensure that only his message was conveyed," wrote Judge Wiley Daniel in dismissing the suit.

Weise and Young appealed to the Supreme Court with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union and argued that when government officials are "speaking at events that are open to the public and paid for by the taxpayers," they may not screen out persons based solely on their views.

They acknowledged that the president or other elected officials may screen the audience when they are speaking at partisan political gatherings or at private gatherings.

The justices without comment turned down the appeal in Weise vs. Casper.

"Official reprisal for protected speech offends the Constitution," Ginsburg said in her two-page dissent, "because it threatens to inhibit exercise of the protected right."

david.savage@latimes.com