2024 District of Columbia Code
Title 5 - Police, Firefighters, Medical Examiner, and Forensic Sciences
Chapter 3A - First Amendment Rights and Police Standards
Subchapter I - First Amendment Assemblies
§ 5–331.03. Policy on First Amendment assemblies

It is the declared public policy of the District of Columbia that:

(1) Persons and groups have a right to organize and participate in peaceful First Amendment assemblies on the streets, sidewalks, and other public ways, and in the parks of the District of Columbia, and to engage in First Amendment assembly near the object of their protest so they may be seen and heard, subject to reasonable restrictions designed to protect public safety, persons, and property, and to accommodate the interest of persons not participating in the assemblies to use the streets, sidewalks, and other public ways to travel to their intended destinations, and use the parks for recreational purposes; and

(2) MPD shall not engage in mass arrests of groups that include First Amendment assemblies or that began as a First Amendment assembly unless MPD:

(A) Determines that the assembly has transformed, in substantial part or in whole, into an activity subject to dispersal or arrest; and

(B) Has issued an order to disperse as described in § 5-331.07(e) and (e-1).

(Apr. 13, 2005, D.C. Law 15-352, § 103, 52 DCR 2296; Apr. 21, 2023, D.C. Law 24-345, § 121(b), 70 DCR 7904.)

This section is referenced in § 5-331.04 and § 5-331.07.