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Free Speech

"Kids, if Your Parents Are MAGA, They Love Child Rapists" Sign Protected by First Amendment

Eugene Volokh | 7.2.2026 8:01 AM

From the Complaint.

From Judge Randolph Moss (D.D.C.) Monday in Accountability Now USA v. Griess, decided Monday (correctly, I think):

Plaintiff Accountability Now is an unincorporated association that holds a permit from the NPS [National Park Service] to conduct "a demonstration near the George Meade Statue on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C." "Volunteers maintain the demonstration twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week" at which they "engage in face-to-face conversations with members of the public[] to call attention to the rise of fascism in the United States and [to] demand the impeachment of President Trump." Plaintiff's "current permit was issued on April 13, 2026, and is valid through August 12, 2026[,]" and Plaintiff "intends to obtain another permit when the current permit expires, at the same or another location on NPS-managed land in the District of Columbia."

On February 24, 2026, in response to reporting "that the Justice Department was withholding more than 50 pages of FBI interviews with a woman who had accused Donald Trump of sexually abusing her when she was a minor[,]" Plaintiff began to display two new signs at the demonstration. One sign reads: "TRUMP RAPED LITTLE GIRLS." The other reads: "KIDS, IF YOUR PARENTS ARE MAGA, THEY LOVE CHILD RAPISTS." According to Plaintiff, "[t]he display of those signs has engendered numerous conversations between volunteers and passersby regarding President Trump's behavior, morality, and fitness to continue in office." … [Plaintiffs allege that] NPS agents requested that the two child rape signs be taken down, although it is not clear whether the NPS officials provided a reason for the request during the conversation…

Under the well-known standard articulated in Miller v. California (1973), speech is obscene if (1) "the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest," (2) "the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state [or federal] law," and "the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value…. Understandably, Defendants have now conceded that the two signs at issue are not obscene as to adults. Indeed, to argue otherwise would be to suggest that virtually every news outlet in the country violates the obscenity laws every time it refers to allegations of rape or rape of a minor.

Nor can one plausibly maintain that the First Amendment affords no protection to those who accuse high ranking government officials of having committed sex crimes, including the rape of a child. Allegations of rape, standing alone, do not appeal to any prurient or unwholesome interest in nudity, sex, or excretion; they do not describe sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and, indeed, do not describe a particular sex act at all; and they do not lack all serious political value. To the contrary, "'[o]bscene antigovernment' speech, … is a contradiction in terms: If........

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