Gary Humble
Gary Humble is the Founder and Chairman of the Board of Tennessee Stands, an organization working to secure liberty and hold elected officials accountable to the Constitution through legislation, litigation, and education. Follow Gary @garyhumble and visit www.tennesseestands.org.
Federal Court Defends Evangelist’s Free Speech at Franklin Pride Festival
Photo source: Matt Masters (Williamson Scene)
A Tentative Victory for Free Speech and Religious Liberty
A federal judge has delivered a major win for free speech and religious liberty in the case of Joseph Cocchini v. City of Franklin, Tennessee. In a strongly worded opinion, the court affirmed that Joseph Cocchini – a Christian evangelist arrested at 2023’s Franklin Pride Festival – was well within his First Amendment rights to express his religious views on public grounds. The ruling emphasizes that the Constitution does not take a backseat simply because a private group is hosting an event in a public park. Cocchini’s peaceful sharing of the Gospel at the festival “did not dissipate” his free speech rights, even if the event was organized by a private entity, as long as the park remained open to the general public. This landmark decision sends a clear message: Americans do not lose their free speech rights in public forums, even at events that celebrate messages they personally disagree with.
Crucially, the court found that Cocchini behaved lawfully and peacefully during the Franklin Pride Festival. He entered the event (held at Franklin’s Harlinsdale Farm park) after passing security, wore a shirt reading “Jesus Changed My Life. Ask Me How,” and engaged festivalgoers in polite conversations about faith. According to evidence viewed in Cocchini’s favor, he was “calmly sharing religious viewpoints” and not causing any disturbance or breaking any laws when he was ordered to leave. In other words, his conduct was entirely within the bounds of lawful free expression. The judge underscored that “it was clearly established at the time of his arrest that [Cocchini] had the right to speak about his discordant views at the festival, so long as he did so peacefully and without causing a disruption”. This affirmation of Cocchini’s First Amendment rights is a significant victory for those who believe that even traditional Judeo-Christian viewpoints deserve a voice in the public square, despite growing pressure to silence them under the guise of “tolerance” and “inclusion.”
City Overreach: Public Park, Private Censorship
The court’s opinion also delivers a sharp rebuke to the City of Franklin’s overreach in empowering Pride Festival organizers to police speech on public property. Franklin city officials had effectively handed over control of a public park to private event staff, allowing them to decide who could stay or be ejected based on viewpoint. Evidence revealed an unwritten City policy granting Franklin Pride’s organizers “complete discretion” over who could attend the festival – discretion the city’s police officers enforced without question. In practice, this meant that if the Pride organizers “didn’t want” certain people or messages at the event, the police would remove those people simply because “that’s their call,” as one Franklin officer admitted on camera. Another officer told Cocchini point-blank that his removal was “not [the police’s] decision” – it was solely at the behest of the private event staff. These astonishing instructions stemmed directly from a city briefing that ordered officers to “unequivocally abide” by Franklin Pride’s wishes.
The federal court recognized how dangerous and unconstitutional this arrangement was. The First Amendment forbids the government from subcontracting its censorship to private parties. A public park like Harlinsdale Farm is the quintessential “traditional public forum” where free speech rights are at their apex. The judge noted that the City of Franklin cannot just declare a public space “limited” or “private” by fiat to stifle speech it dislikes. Citing decades of precedent, the court emphasized that the government “may not by its own ipse dixit (unsupported assertion)” turn a public forum into a no-speech zone for disfavored views. “To allow the government to limit traditional public forum property and thereby create within it a nonpublic forum would destroy the entire concept of a public forum,” the opinion warned. In plain terms, Franklin officials overstepped their authority by colluding with festival organizers to shut down dissenting voices on public land. The court refused to accept the City’s argument that the Pride permit magically transformed the park into a private domain. Instead, it held that Cocchini and others retained their constitutional rights on those grounds, and any attempt to muzzle them solely due to their viewpoint is presumptively unlawful.
This aspect of the ruling is a critical win for free expression in an era when some municipalities might be tempted to appease activist groups by suppressing opposing viewpoints. The court’s message is clear: public officials cannot farm out their police power to ideological activists to do an end-run around the First Amendment. If a city allows a public festival, it must respect the rights of everyone – even those with “discordant” or unpopular religious views – to speak their mind peacefully on those public grounds. Franklin’s approach of giving Pride organizers a veto over who may be present was not only wrong; it may well be the “moving force” behind a serious constitutional violation in this case. By calling out this municipal collusion against free speech, the court has put other cities on notice that similar tactics will not pass legal muster.
Holding Officials Accountable: No Qualified Immunity for Officer
In a striking part of the decision, the court declined to grant qualified immunity to the police officer who arrested Cocchini, Officer Kevin Spry. Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine that often shields government officials from personal liability if the law was not “clearly established” at the time of their actions. Officer Spry argued that he shouldn’t be held personally liable because he was just enforcing trespassing laws at a “private” event and claimed no prior case law made it obvious that removing a speaker in that context was unconstitutional. The judge flatly rejected this argument. In fact, the opinion catalogued a line of cases holding that when an event in a public park is open to the public, police cannot arrest someone solely for the content of their speech at that event. By June 2023 (when Cocchini was arrested), it was “clearly established” that arresting an individual for his speech in a public forum is objectively unreasonable. Simply put, any reasonable officer should have known better.
Officer Spry admitted he had no personal knowledge of Cocchini doing anything unlawful or disruptive – he was acting entirely on the festival coordinator’s request. The court found this very troubling. Citing the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Judge Waverly Crenshaw reminded that “public officials have an obligation to follow the Constitution even in the midst of a contrary directive from a superior or in a policy.” In other words, “just following orders” is no defense when those orders violate a citizen’s clearly established rights. Even if Officer Spry’s superiors or the event staff told him to remove Cocchini, he was duty-bound to obey the Constitution first. The judge pointed out that state action that effectively “suppresses a particular viewpoint or content in a public forum” is a First Amendment violation, regardless of the officer’s personal intent. Here, the effect of Spry’s actions was to silence a religious viewpoint at the bidding of private organizers – a textbook example of unlawful viewpoint discrimination.
Because the law on this was clear, the court ruled that Officer Spry is not entitled to qualified immunity and must face the consequences of his actions in court. This means Cocchini’s lawsuit against Spry can proceed, and the officer may be held personally liable for damages if a jury finds that he violated Cocchini’s First Amendment rights. For advocates of civil liberties, this is an important development. Accountability is key to deterring future abuses: when officials know they cannot hide behind immunity for blatant violations of free speech, they will think twice before ordering someone handcuffed just for sharing a Bible verse or a controversial opinion in a public park.
Broader Implications in the Battle for Values and Free Discourse
Conservatives and religious liberty advocates are rightly celebrating this ruling as a turning point in the broader cultural battle over free speech and public morals. The Franklin Pride incident is not an isolated case; it symbolizes a growing trend where traditional Judeo-Christian values are being shunted aside under the pretext of “inclusion.” At the Franklin festival, the organizers explicitly stated they would “not allow anyone to proselytize” and demanded “unconditional acceptance” of their views – effectively declaring that Christian speech was unwelcome on public property. When Cocchini gently challenged that narrative by sharing his faith, he was summarily treated as a trespasser. This pattern – silencing dissenting religious voices in the name of tolerance – is deeply ironic and deeply alarming. If it were allowed to stand, it would mean one side of a contentious moral debate gets to use government muscle to kick the other side out of the public square. That is exactly the opposite of how the First Amendment is supposed to work.
The federal court’s opinion in Cocchini v. City of Franklin pushes back hard against this anti-free-speech trend. It reaffirms that the Constitution protects minority viewpoints, including traditional religious perspectives, from mob veto or government-sanctioned cancelation. The decision shines a light on the dangers of municipalities colluding with ideological activists to shut down dissent. When a city like Franklin teams up with an activist group to enforce a one-sided “safe space” on public land, they cross a constitutional line. The judge’s ruling reminds us that the proper response to speech you disagree with is more speech, not government-backed expulsion of the speaker. No group, no matter how politically fashionable, can demand the government silence all opposition at a public event.
For the conservative community, this case is a heartening example of the courts upholding the rule of law and constitutional principles in the face of political pressure. It validates what free-speech defenders have long argued: the First Amendment doesn’t bend to fads or fragile feelings. Biblical viewpoints have as much right to be aired in the public arena as any others, Pride Festival or not. Moreover, the ruling underscores that neutral enforcement of laws – not viewpoint-based policing – is the non-negotiable duty of our public servants. Franklin’s mistake was allowing a permit to become a tool for viewpoint discrimination, and the court’s intervention has corrected that course subject to a pending jury trial.
Next Steps: Trial by Jury and the Path to Lasting Precedent
While this court opinion is a decisive victory for Cocchini and the First Amendment, the fight is not over. The case now proceeds to trial, currently scheduled for September 9, 2025, where a jury will hear the evidence and ultimately determine whether Cocchini’s rights were violated and what remedies he is entitled to. It is crucial that this case prevails before a jury, not only for Cocchini’s sake but to cement these principles in a lasting verdict. A jury’s verdict in favor of Cocchini would reinforce the message that cities and police departments will be held to account if they attempt to bulldoze free speech rights in deference to one ideology.
The upcoming trial will also give the community an opportunity to weigh in through the judicial process. Twelve ordinary citizens could soon send a powerful signal: that Americans won’t stand for the silencing of Christian beliefs or any viewpoint in the public square and that “tolerance” cannot be a one-way street. If Cocchini prevails, Franklin’s officials (and, by extension, other cities) may have to rethink their event policies, ensuring that peaceful speakers will never again be hauled off in handcuffs simply for voicing a different perspective. Such a result would set a valuable precedent for similar conflicts nationwide, from pride parades to campus rallies – wherever the temptation arises to declare an opposing voice unwelcome.
In sum, the federal court’s handling of Joseph Cocchini v. City of Franklin is a resounding affirmation of constitutional freedoms at a time when they cannot be taken for granted. It stands as a reminder that the First Amendment is for everyone, or it is for no one. Today, it is a Christian evangelist at a Pride festival; tomorrow, it could be any one of us with an unpopular opinion.
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Gary Humble
Gary Humble