Prattville Mayor Bill Gillespie is asking the city council to consider bringing in a third party to manage parades “to get politics out of that small town feel.”
Gillespie made the suggestion during his comment period at last week’s city council session, noting the “negative controversy about our parades.”
Some citizens, alongside the group Clean Up Prattville, raised opposition last year to the participation of Prattville Pride in the Christmas parade, and Gillespie ultimately chose to remove Prattville Pride from the parade, citing safety concerns.
Prattville Pride quickly sued the city in federal court and obtained an injunction ensuring the group would be able to participate in the parade, as denying the group’s entry would violate its First Amendment rights.
“Prattville Pride is aware of the mayor’s recent comments regarding turning the Christmas parade over to a third-party sponsor to ‘keep politics out of it,’” said Prattville Pride co-founder Caryl Lawson. “If the purpose of this change is to exclude our organization, that would be a clear attempt to sidestep the federal court ruling we won last year affirming our right to participate.”
Gillespie said he would still like to see the city doing the “heavy lifting” and told APR he could foresee the city reimbursing whatever third party takes on management of the parades.
It’s still unclear what the change could look like, with Gillespie saying he has not done much research on the subject other than talking to Millbrook Mayor Al Kelley on how Millbrook approaches parades. There is a committee meeting at 4 p.m. today at the Doster Community Center to discuss the idea.
Gillespie told APR that the goal is to keep negativity away from the parades.
“It’s not anything to be used as a political grandstand or possibly put our employees in harm’s way for what some people are trying to use as a political grandstand,” Gillespie said.
Prattville Pride was formed after an informal group held a “pride picnic” by Autauga Creek in 2023, which was met by protests from the white supremacist group Patriot Front as well as locals.
Lawson said the group’s existence—and LGBTQ+ individuals’ existence—is not political.
“Our presence in the parade is about community, visibility, and inclusion,” Lawson said. “We want to give our friends and family members an opportunity to join us in a beloved holiday tradition. We hope the city chooses to move forward in the spirit of fairness and equality, but if exclusion is attempted again, we are prepared to defend our rights.”
The city’s two main parades are the Christmas parade and the Mardi Gras parade. Despite the chatter around Prattville Pride’s participation in the Christmas parade last year, there were minimal safety issues with the float’s inclusion and Prattville Pride participated in the Mardi Gras parade with little attention.
While the city cannot deny Prattville Pride entry into the parade, a private third-party group has more legal ground to maneuver.
The 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston is a strikingly similar situation in which a municipality authorized a private group to organize the parade, and despite several injunctions from federal courts, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided that the private group could exclude the LGBTQ group as part of its expression.
