Street preacher gets Supreme Court go-ahead for fight to protest at concerts [View all]

Source: Courthouse News Service

March 20, 2026


WASHINGTON (CN) — Despite a 30-year-old precedent by originalism’s chief architect, the Supreme Court ruled Friday to allow an evangelical street protester’s lawsuit against a city ordinance that limits protests around concert venues. Heck v. Humphrey , a 1994 ruling authored by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, typically bars defendants from using civil rights claims to undermine prior convictions. But Gabriel Olivier asked the Supreme Court to greenlight his suit against a Brandon, Mississippi, ordinance because he was only requesting prospective relief.

The high court agreed. In a unanimous ruling led by Justice Elena Kagan, a Barack Obama appointee, the court held that Olivier’s suit could proceed because he wasn’t trying to attack his old conviction or risk parallel litigation on his prior conduct.“The suit, after all, is not about what Olivier did in the past, and depends on no proof addressed to his prior conviction,” Kagan wrote. “Unlike in Heck , the suit merely attempts to prevent a future prosecution. So the Heck bar does not come into play.”

Olivier was arrested for demonstrating outside of a designated protest area at Brandon’s amphitheater before a Lee Brice concert in 2021. Olivier and other church colleagues instead stood at a busy intersection holding large signs that depicted aborted fetuses, using a loudspeaker to call patrons “whores” and “Jezebels.”

A municipal court issued a fine and put Olivier on unsupervised probation, as long as he didn’t violate the city ordinance for a year. Olivier didn’t appeal his conviction. While on probation, Olivier filed civil rights claims against the city, claiming the ordinance violated his First and 14th amendment rights.

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