Recently, Joshua Corney, a Lieutenant Commander, had trouble with a local government when he was trying to honor a fallen soldier. Mr. Corney, being a naval officer who is not on active duty, is from a small town within Pennsylvania. He plays the military bugle on his own property which is about 5 acres large every night. He plays the blue and a recording of taps at 8 P.M. He does this nightly as a tribute to those who didn’t make it home. Within his hometown of Glen Rock, he got a complaint about loud music. He turned the volume down of the speaker and made sure that it was pointed away from the neighbor who was complaining. During two years of playing taps, he’s only on his second complaint. The second one was from a different neighbor. This neighbor decided to go right to the authorities instead of checking in with Joshua directly like the first neighbor. Usually, within the small town, people can solve problems with each other on their own, but apparently not this time.
Since Joshua was able to solve the first complaint so easily, he was surprised by the strong nature of the second complaint from multiple people. These neighbors already knew why Joshua was playing music for less than one minute just at the beginning of the night. However, he was now in danger of receiving a fine for continuing to salute fallen soldiers in this way with music. The local government sided with his neighbors instead of him. He was told that he could only play his music on Sundays and holidays. If he played it on any other day, he would be fined $3000. Since this was such a large fine, Joshua decided he needed help. So, Joshua went to the ALCU who agreed to help him maintain his First Amendment rights. The ALCU is an organization known for helping people in all different types of situations with maintaining their rights and freedoms according to the Constitution. Given the fact that Mr. Corney was practicing First Amendment rights on his own property for a single minute at an early hour that is likely within the noise codes for most districts, it was odd that there was a problem in the first place. However, he did receive help from the ALCU organization to make sure that his rights stayed intact.
In fact, Joshua was confused that a conservative town such as the one he was from would have so much trouble seeing his point of view for practicing his First Amendment rights, especially since he was doing so in order to support fallen members of the military. After all, he was only doing it for a single minute per day. Fortunately, the outcome looks positive given the help of the ACLU who often handles very different cases in very different situations from a small conservative town in Pennsylvania. However, Joshua feels strongly about his First Amendment rights and so does the ALCU, so that is a commonality that he has with that group, specifically the Pennsylvania ACLU. The main part of the conflict may be partly over the actual noise level, however, adding a complication to the case.
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