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Public Interest In Rosa Parks Overrides Publicity Right

BY Katheryn Hayes Tucker
January 31, 2016

In an opinion that reads like a biography, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit used Rosa Parks' starring role in the civil rights movement to justify ruling against a nonprofit corporation that owns her name and likeness. The appeals court held that the nonprofit cannot pursue a common-law right of publicity case against Target Corp. over the retailer's selling books, movies and a plaque depicting Parks' life.

The appeals court's opinion said that U.S. District Judge W. Keith Watkins of the Middle District of Alabama was correct in deciding the First Amendment shielded Target against a lawsuit filed by the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development v. Target Corp., 15-10880.

The 15-page appellate opinion opens like a movie script describing the events of December 1, 1955, the day Parks was arrested for refusing a Montgomery bus driver's demand that she give up her seat to a white man. “Although more than a year had passed” since the Supreme Court issued Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, invalidating the separate-but-equal doctrine, “change was slow to arrive in Alabama.”

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