"Laguna Beach Parade Hit by Political Fight"

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. (AP) - For nearly 40 years, this quaint city overlooking the Pacific has united around its annual Patriots' Day Parade, a celebration of school marching bands, charities, civic groups and military personnel.

The small-town tradition, though, has become an unlikely battlefield in the national debate over illegal immigration.

The nonprofit group that runs the parade recently rejected a float sponsored by the Minuteman Project, a self-styled border patrol run by illegal immigration opponent Jim Gilchrist. Now, his group is threatening legal action on free-speech and discrimination grounds and has gone to the airwaves to criticize the city and its parade.

Despite a stream of e-mails and phone calls from Minuteman supporters, however, the parade committee reaffirmed its position in a three-hour meeting late Monday and voted unanimously to ban the Minuteman Project on political grounds.

http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20060124/D8FB2EE05.html

A snip from the article:

The parade committee, however, turned down the application because it found the group's participation would violate its bylaws, which ban groups with a religious or political affiliation or message. The association, which isn't affiliated with the city, puts on the show each year for about $10,000, Quilter said.

This isn't free speech grounds. If it was a city-held event, yes, it would be a free speech issue, but the parade committee is a private organization, not a government entity.

and hope they worded their rejection differently than "ban...on political grounds."

My office is in Laguna...didn't know about this. Gilchrist is not from Laguna and his group is not headquartered here. The patriots Day Parade is a very local, small affair with little outside participation, as I remember (haven't seen it since my kids were in it years ago).

Good for the parade committee though, IMO