A Wellsville man is suing that village’s police chief and two of its officers alleging they violated his constitutional rights when they arrested him for displaying a sign that read “F*** the police.”  Unlike the word in this news story, the "F" word was not censored on the sign.

The civil suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Youngstown by an attorney representing Steven Wright, who claims officers Aaron Yourex and Doug Filippi arrested him on August 28, 2022, outside his sister’s Main Street home where he had been holding the sign that included the “F” word expletive while recording video on his mobile phone.

In his complaint, Wright claims he had received no complaints from passers-by while holding the sign for three hours when officers arrived and told him to stop showing the sign or face being charged with disorderly conduct.

According to documents, a police dispatcher and the mayor had received complaints about the language on the sign, including from people walking from a nearby church on that Sunday.

Wright says he retreated into the house but returned shortly to the front of the home carrying the same sign.

The lawsuit says Wright was handcuffed, jailed for six hours, under a village ordinance that makes it illegal to recklessly cause an annoyance by making an offensively course utterance, gesture, or display of unwarranted and grossly abusive language.

Wright went before the Mayor’s Court the following month where the disorderly conduct charge was dismissed.

The suit alleges that the two officers and Police Chief Eddy Wilson violated the first, fourth, and fourteenth constitution amendments rights protecting Wrights rights to free speech, due process and protecting him from retaliation and false arrest.

"The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or to challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state,” wrote Dayton attorney Lynette Dinkler in the complaint.

The lawsuit seeks a jury trial and unspecified monetary damages for pain, suffering, humiliation, and mental anguish.

Legal battles over public display of the “F” word is nothing new.

In 1971 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a California man who had been arrested for wearing a jacket bearing the words “F*** the Draft” in a Los Angeles Courthouse.

The justices ruled that absent a more particularized and compelling reason for its actions, the State may not, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, make the simple public display of the single four-letter expletive a criminal offense.

The defendants have yet to file a reply to Wright’s complaint.