Judge bars 'Cops-as-Pigs' painting from Capitol walls
A federal judge has rejected a request to rehang a controversial painting depicting police officers as animals that drew national headlines earlier this year after Republican lawmakers repeatedly removed it from a display inside the U.S. Capitol complex.
Saying the court was "sympathetic to plaintiffs given the treatment afforded" to the painting, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates declined to issue a preliminary injunction requested by Rep. Lacy Clay that would allow the painting to hang in the Cannon Tunnel between the Capitol and a congressional office building while a lawsuit over its disposition is resolved.
"There is little doubt that the removal of the painting was based on its viewpoint," Bates said in his ruling, dated Friday. But he concluded that the government's editorial decision to select and present the artwork meant that the display amounted to government speech and was, therefore, not subject to First Amendment protections.
Clay, a Missouri Democrat, filed the lawsuit along with the painting's artist, David Pulphus, who created the work for the Congressional Art Competition that takes place annually among high school students.
The picture was displayed for nearly seven months with little notice before some conservative news outlets reported on it, generating a number of complaints from lawmakers and police unions based on its content, which they believed was "anti-police."
It depicts police officers with the animalistic features of a pig or warthog along with symbolic elements of the 2014 shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., removed the painting on Jan. 6 and left it in Clay's office with a handwritten note complaining it did not comply with the competition's suitability guidelines.
The guidelines for the contest prohibit paintings "depicting subjects of contemporary political controversy" or those of a "sensationalistic or gruesome nature."
Clay rehung the painting, and it was removed twice more before Architect of the Capitol Stephen Ayers agreed it was unsuitable and ordered it taken down. The issue became a flashpoint of controversy between Republicans and the Congressional Black Caucus, and Clay, whose district includes Ferguson, filed a lawsuit along with Pulphus claiming viewpoint discrimination.
"Our nation was founded on the very principle of freedom of speech, and there are few places where that core freedom warrants greater respect than the U.S. Capitol," Clay and Pulphus said in a joint statement Tuesday. "We believe our Constitution simply cannot tolerate a situation where artwork can be removed from the Capitol for the first time ever as a result of a series of ideologically and politically driven complaints."
Clay and Pulphus said they intend to appeal the decision, but time is running out. The painting is only eligible to be hung in the Capitol until May 1 when the exhibit ends.
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