Here is the latest press release from the NAACP site. It seems the hotel chain doesn't want NAACP picketers around its hotels.

July 27, 2001

NAACP STANDS BY ADAM'S MARK BOYCOTT IN FACE OF LAWSUIT BY HOTEL
Constitutional precedent says NAACP has right to boycott the lodging company

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) today said it stands by it boycott of the Adams' Mark hotel chain in the face of a lawsuit filed Friday by the HBE Corporation, owner of the Adam's Mark hotel chain. The suit is an attempt to prevent picketing by the NAACP at its hotels and to force the civil rights organization to halt its political boycott of the chain that was announced earlier this month.

NAACP President and CEO Kweisi Mfume said: "This lawsuit is a blatant attempt to stifle the voice of the NAACP and others engaged in legitimate public criticism of this company's discriminatory practices, and we will vigorously defend against it. The mission of the NAACP is to speak truth to power, and we will not be silenced by this heavy-handed attempt to shut off public debate. The First Amendment was designed to protect against just this kind of censorship."

Federal and state officials and various citizens, along with the NAACP, have accused the hotel chain of racial discrimination. Although the hotel chain is currently operating under a consent decree entered into with the Department of Justice, it has refused to date to publicly acknowledge its wrongful conduct or to settle the remaining discrimination actions against it.

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Baltimore, names as defendants the NAACP, NAACP Board Chairman Julian Bond, and Mfume. Adam's Mark said it intends early next week to ask the Court for an injunction prohibiting the NAACP and its members from picketing its establishments or otherwise calling for a boycott of the company's facilities.

Mfume said, "The lawsuit filed today can be traced directly to complaints regarding Adam's Mark hotel chain's discriminatory practices toward African Americans, including particularly its treatment of guests at its Daytona Beach,

Florida hotel during the Black College Reunion weekend in 1999."

In 1999, the NAACP, the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, and three private law firms filed a lawsuit on behalf of several guests at the Daytona Beach property. The plaintiffs allege they were forced to prepay for rooms and amenities; wear non-detachable, neon-orange identification wristbands; and enter the hotel through barricades staffed by a heavy police presence. The plaintiffs also allege that the hotel refused to allow its African American guests to unload their luggage in its covered entryway and refused to rent to them anything but the most basic rooms, reserving its better rooms for employees and police officers staying at the hotel.

After the guests filed suit, the Florida Attorney General moved to intervene on the guests' side, and the U.S. Department of Justice filed a separate lawsuit of its own arising out of the Daytona Beach incident. In March 2000, the St. Louis-based company agreed to settle these lawsuits and would have paid out over $8 million and implemented anti-discrimination programs and training, but the federal judge hearing the case declined to approve the proposed class-action settlement. Since then, Adam's Mark has refused to support the settlement on appeal and has refused to proceed in good faith to settle the State of Florida's and the guests' case, which remains pending.

Adam's Mark did, however, enter into a settlement with the Department of Justice that resulted in the court's entry of a consent decree. Although the hotel agreed to undertake certain training of its employees and to be subject to monitoring for compliance with the terms of the decree, Adam's Mark refused to admit that it had committed discrimination or to apologize for its conduct.

Earlier this month, the Florida Commission on Human Relations concluded that there was reasonable cause to believe that Adam's Mark had unlawfully discriminated against African American guests during the 1999 Black College Reunion. The announcement by the Commission, coupled with the failure of Adam's Mark to negotiate in good faith a settlement of the lawsuit brought by the NAACP, prompted the NAACP to renew its earlier call for economic sanctions against the chain on July 11, 2001.

The hotel company responded by threatening to sue the NAACP if it did not call off the boycott and, although the NAACP pointed out to Adam's Mark that its protest is fully protected by the Constitution, the hotel company today filed suit.

"The Adam's Mark lawsuit flies in the face not just of long-standing Supreme Court precedent," Mfume noted, "but also in the face of the very purpose and meaning of the First Amendment to our great Constitution. Instead of trying, through a meritless lawsuit, to shut us up, Adam's Mark should stand up, squarely admit that it has done wrong, publicly apologize to those who were the victims of its discriminatory conduct, and explain specifically what it is doing and will do to correct its behavior. That is what we have sought, and what the hotel company so far has refused to do."

The United States Supreme Court repeatedly has upheld the right oforganizations like the NAACP to engage in non-violent economic boycotts as a means of political protest. Some twenty years ago, in the NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. case that grew out of a racial dispute between African American citizens

and white merchants, the Court unanimously held that "speech to protest racial discrimination is essential political speech lying at the core of the First Amendment." The high court further ruled that those who engage in non-violent picketing and other forms of communication as part of a boycott may not be punished, or held civilly liable, for doing so.

"Until Adam's Mark publicly acknowledges responsibility for its wrongdoing and comes to terms with the plaintiffs in the pending discrimination lawsuit, Mfume said, "the NAACP will continue to call on all persons and organizations who support the principle of equality under the law to stop doing business with the Adam's Mark hotels."

Founded in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. Its half-million adult and youth members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities and monitor equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.

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