Lawyers trying to reopen the Washington office of the Palestine Liberation Organization argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Tuesday that the closing violated the First Amendment rights of U.S. citizens staffing the office.
Proceedings concluded Tuesday. The three-judge appeals panel did not say when a decision would be announced.
The appeal follows U.S. District Court Judge Charles Richey’s affirmation last Dec. 2 of a Sept. 15, 1987 State Department order designating the Palestine Information Office a foreign mission. Congress soon after ordered the closing of both the PLO’s Washington office and United Nations observer mission.
Richey ruled that closing the information office — the first such action under the 1982 Foreign Missions act — did not violate the First Amendment since it “merely prohibits the PIO from operating as a ‘foreign mission’ of the PLO.”
He added that the closing does not “prohibit, edit, or restrain the distribution of advocacy materials” by the office staffers, so long as they find funding from other sources.
The judge also rejected the plaintiffs’ contention that the closing violated their right of due process, ruling that a foreign mission has no such rights in the United States.
The appeal was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, chief counsel for the appellants. In addition to its claim that the staffers’ First Amendment rights were violated, the appeal contends that the information office is not “substantially owned or effectively controlled by the PLO” and “like the district court’s opinion, the government’s construction of the Foreign Missions Act is unconstitutionally vague.”
Douglas Letter, a Justice Department lawyer, argued that Congress or the administration can close an office under the Foreign Missions Act so long as that office is “substantially owned” by a foreign government or is “effectively controlled” by a foreign power.
The judges hearing the appeal, Abner Mikva, Laurence Silberman and Kenneth Starr, were not asked to rule on the order to close the PLO’s observer mission at the United Nations. That office remains open, with a Justice Department announcement expected any day before the March 31 closing deadline as to whether it will enforce the law.
Although the State Department opposes closing the PLO U.N. mission for fear of violating its international treaty obligations, President Reagan signed the provision into law in December as part of the 1988 State Department Authorization Bill, rather than veto the entire bill.
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