OCEAN CITY — It remains to be seen if a collection of Ocean City Boardwalk street performers will be successful in challenging the city’s ordinance regulating buskers in federal court, but the challenge won’t be piggybacked on another federal case closed in August.
On Tuesday, a group of six Boardwalk street performers filed a motion in U.S. District Court to reopen or reconsider the case of Chase versus Town of Ocean City for the purpose of seeking declaratory judgment against the resort’s contentious street performer ordinance implemented this summer.
The motion to reopen or reconsider the Chase case was filed by six Boardwalk performers, led by Tony Christ, who purposely received the one and only citation issued to a busker on the Boardwalk this summer, along with Jim Starck, Joseph Smith, Bill Campion, Sr., Jesse Guthrie and Robert Peasley. Among other things, the motion filed on Tuesday seeks a declaratory judgment against Ocean City, which, if approved, would essentially dismiss the busker ordinance implemented in July in its entirety. The motion also seeks $1 million in compensatory and punitive damages against the town for the plantiffs.
However, acting pro se and without legal representation, the named plaintiffs apparently went about the new suit in the wrong way. The motion was an attempt to piggyback on Chase versus Town of Ocean City, which was closed in August when U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Hollander ruled unfavorably on the town’s motion to essentially replace the 2011 ordinance with the new ordinance adopted this summer.
The six Boardwalk street performers filed the motion to reopen or reconsider Chase on Tuesday, and by Wednesday, Hollander had sent it back to the plaintiffs, opining “only parties to the case may file documents,” and “you may wish to file a new case.”
“The clerk received your motion to reopen or reconsider and seek declaratory judgment on October 27,” the letter from the U.S. District Court to Christ reads. “However, it is deficient and is being returned to you at the direction of the presiding judge.”
The original case was filed back in June of 2011 by Boardwalk spray paint artist Mark Chase, who challenged the town’s then-recently adopted ordinance on street performers on several grounds. Essentially, Chase asserted the town’s ordinance violated First Amendment rights to freedom of expression, among other things. Hollander ultimately agreed with Chase and issued a preliminary injunction and later Consent Decree clearly outlining how the town must handle the street performer issue on the Boardwalk.
Over three years later, the town adopted a new ordinance addressing street performer issues, which it enacted in July. The new ordinance was crafted after careful study by a task force, ironically on which Chase served. After considerable debate and public hearings, the town adopted the new street performer ordinance which essentially adheres to the spirit of the old ordinance, but created a new registration and rotation plan for the performers on the Boardwalk from 9th Street to the Inlet.
The new ordinance, particularly the registration and rotation requirements that had many buskers camping out overnight at City Hall in order to sign up for designated spots on the Boardwalk, has continued to be a point of contention and was fiercely debated during a public hearing this week, just one day before the named plaintiffs filed their piggyback motion on Tuesday.
“Although the process of writing documents to the court has been very difficult for us, we come to the court pro se, seeking relief from an ordinance that, if not eliminated, will eliminate street performers as they have been known in the town of Ocean City for the last 65 years,” the motion filed on Tuesday reads. “Such judgment would dismiss the new ordinance in its entirety.”
