For months, Houston police have been citing and arresting local volunteers for the radical act of feeding the needy. Now the city is facing a lawsuit alleging that its crackdown on charitable giving violates the First Amendment.
The Texas Civil Rights Project filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of the Houston chapter of Food Not Bombs (FNBH), a volunteer group that distributes free food in cities worldwide. Since last March, Houston has been trying to force FNBH activists and other volunteers to move their charitable food services to a city-approved parking lot rather than near the downtown library where they had been operating with the city's consent for more than a decade. According to the suit, FNBH members have received over 89 citations from police so far, amounting to $178,000 in fines.
