American Military News by Andrew Pantazi 2/25/2020
Nine years after Larry Murphree’s battle over the right to plant an American flag in a pot outside his condo began, he got to make his same argument to a trial judge.
Murphree, an Air Force veteran, first put a 12-inch by 17-inch flag in a flower pot by his front door in defiance of homeowners association rules in 2011.
He began incurring a $100-a-day fine, which reached $1,000. He filed a federal lawsuit in 2012, and then he signed a settlement agreement with the homeowners association that waived his fines and granted him $4,000 in legal fees. In exchange, he agreed to not disparage the association and to display the flag according to the association’s “reasonable rules and regulations.â€
Almost immediately, a condo association, which is a separate entity but employs the same property managers to oversee the same properties, passed a new “flower pot rule†that prohibited anything other than plants, dirt or water being put into flower pots, including flags. Murphree again incurred a $100-a-day fine, and the association placed a lein on his house.
He filed another federal lawsuit, based on the federal Freedom to Display the American Flag Act of 2005, which made it illegal for associations to ban the display of the Stars and Stripes. However, a federal judge dismissed Murphree’s federal lawsuit in 2014, saying that law didn’t give the ability to sue to enforce the law. That judge told Murphree that his claims would be be “best addressed by the state courts.â€
More:
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/02/fl-veterans-battle-against-homeowners-association-over-flag-rights-lands-in-court/
