The Artful Jurist

It was supposed to be only a six-month moratorium, but it was enough for artist Melanie Gold to file a First Amendment lawsuit in federal court against the upstate New York village of Greenwood Lake.  According to a Times Herald-Record newspaper article, when Ms. Gold announced her plan to paint a mural on the side of a private building, village officials enacted a six-month ban on public art to give themselves time to establish a new committee for the purpose of creating a public art code -- something the town apparently didn't have but the officials deemed to be an important first step to giving official blessing to publicly displayed murals.  Ms. Gold filed suit, claiming the ban infringed her First Amendment rights, and, she painted three public murals in protest.

According to the article, the suit was settled this month when the village agreed to repeal the ban.  A victory, it seems, for the artist.  Of course, if my math is correct, the six-month public art ban, which the article states was enacted on November 1st, was scheduled to end at the close of this month anyway.