A new Salt Lake City rule limiting protesting in front of homes doesn't apply to the Governor's Mansion, the city's attorney ruled this week, alleviating some — but not all — of a civil-rights attorney's concerns.

City Attorney Ed Rutan has issued a notice to city police that the ordinance approved 5-2 by the City Council three weeks ago should not be used to stop protests at the governor's South Temple home because it doesn't meet the ordinance's definition of a "residence."

"Because of the uses of the Governor's Mansion for public meetings, it falls outside the definition in the ordinance," Rutan said. "When I say public meeting, the way we construed that is meetings where the public's business is done rather than a meeting that is open to the public."

In other words, hosting a meeting that's open to the public — say, a political party caucus meeting — does not suddenly make your home a potential target of protests.

The ordinance was crafted in response to picketing over recent years at the homes of University of Utah researchers by the Utah Primate Freedom Project, which opposes animal testing.

Rutan said city staff simply didn't think of the impact the new ordinance would have on the Governor's Mansion, which has historically been the site of protests by activists on all sorts of issues — including Mayor Rocky Anderson, whose administration backed the new ordinance, and who took part in an anti-capital punishment rally at the mansion in 1992.

Concerns that the new ordinance would nix the mansion's standing as a free-speech forum led civil-rights attorney Brian Barnard, on behalf of the Anti-Hunger Action Committee, to file a suit challenging the constitutionality of the ordinance.

On Tuesday, he said he was glad to see that the anti-hunger group would be able to protest at the mansion in the future, as it has done in the past, but that he still has some concerns.

"Eliminating our concern about the Governor's Mansion is a step in the right direction, but we're not running over to the courthouse to withdraw our lawsuit just yet," Barnard said.

He said he has questions about whether the ordinance sets constitutionally sound time, place and manner restrictions on protests in a content-neutral way.

"The Salt Lake City ordinance isn't a complete ban," he said. "One of the criteria they have to determine whether or not it's a crime is the targeting of the occupant of a residence. So clearly if the city said you can't demonstrate in any city neighborhoods, that's content neutral. Nobody can, if you're for this or against this. But what the city has done is said if your target is the occupant of a residence you can't demonstrate within 100 feet of the residence. It seems to me that's content based. It's based upon who — not where but who — your target is."

Barnard also wondered whether the rule should apply to other public houses, such as the U. president's home, which is funded by the school and occasionally hosts school functions. Rutan said his clarification this week was based on a study of the Governor's Mansion specifically and other exemptions would have to be considered individually.

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