"No Immunity"

Martin Luther King, among other Negro leaders, has long since enunciated the notion that civil rights demonstrators should defy a particular law if they consider it "unjust" or "morally wrong." Under the umbrella of this idea that civil disobedience is O.K. when it is done in the name of civil rights, demonstrators have dumped garbage in New York's City Hall Plaza, urinated in a Montgomery, Ala., public square, staged a sit-in in a White House corridor, and stopped traffic on scores of street and highways by lying down on the pavement.

Last week in Montgomery, U.S. District Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. ruled that civil righteousness is no excuse for lawlessness. A native Alabamian, and a Republican who was appointed to the bench by President Eisenhower, Johnson has probably handled more sticky civil rights cases than any other federal trial judge. More often than not, he has ruled in favor of the civil rights forces --as last spring, when he authorized the Selma-for-Montgomery Negro protest march. Says Johnson: "I'm not a segregationist, but I'm no crusader either. I just interpret the law."

Last spring 167 persons demonstrated before the Alabama state capitol in Montgomery and were charged variously with loitering, disturbing the peace and refusing to obey officers. Also arrested were 16 persons who had demonstrated at Montgomery's predominantly Negro Alabama State College. The charge against them: trespassing. Both groups sought to have their cases transferred from local to federal court, on the grounds that they were exercising their constitutional rights.

Last week Johnson refused to accept jurisdiction. Ruled the judge: "There is no immunity conferred by our Constitution and laws of the United States to those individuals who insist upon practicing civil disobedience under the guise of demonstrating or protesting for 'civil rights.' The philosophy that a person may--if his cause is labeled 'civil rights' or 'states' rights'--determine for himself what laws and court decisions are morally right or wrong and either obey or refuse to obey them according to his own determination, is a philosophy that is foreign to our 'rule-of-law' theory of government.

"Those who resort to civil disobedience such as the petitioners were engaged in ... cannot and should not escape arrest and prosecution. Civil disobedience by 'civil rights workers' in the form of 'going limp' and lying or marching in the streets or upon the sidewalks, or marching around the city hall while night court was in session, singing 'freedom' songs, or taking to the streets to do their parading and picketing in lieu of using the sidewalks, while failing to make any application to city authorities for a parade permit, is still a violation of the law."

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