Idaho prosecutor drops case against preacher who crashed Pride festival
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Noah Daly, Idaho Statesman
NAMPA (Idaho Statesman) — The Canyon County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said Monday it plans to drop the state’s case against Titus Folks, an evangelical preacher who, on June 14, attempted to set up a table to distribute religious literature next to the annual Canyon County Pride Festival at Lakeview Park in Nampa.
Organizers of the festival asked Folks to leave, but when he refused, they called police, according to a press release from the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. Officers arrived on the scene and cited Folks for trespassing when he refused to leave the park grounds.
The Prosecuting Attorney’s Office determined that while the organizers of the Pride Festival were entitled to reserve the space to hold their public event, the permit “does not give the permit holder unfettered discretion to exclude a person from that forum for the content of his speech.”
“Instead of supporting his constitutional right to preach, the police trespassed Titus and fined him before he could share the gospel with a single person,” the Idaho Family Policy Center said in a blog post on Aug. 11.
Folks, who is being represented by the IFPC Legal Center, “set up a table at the public park — outside the fenced event — planning to preach the Gospel and engage festival attendees in meaningful discussion with a thought-provoking sign: ‘What is your identity?’” according to the post.
The prosecutor’s office maintains that while Folks could be required to relocate his table, no one could stop him from preaching and handing out flyers.
“The officers handled a difficult situation professionally and in good faith,” Canyon County Prosecuting Attorney Christopher Boyd said in a press release. “That does not change the constitutional analysis. The First Amendment does not yield to a permit or a preference. It is the enduring promise of American liberty that no citizen will be silenced in a public forum for the content of his speech.”
Neither Boyd nor the organizers of the Canyon County Pride Festival were immediately available for comment.