A judge ruled Tuesday that several local Black Lives Matter organizers cannot demonstrate at the Mall of America on the busy shopping day before Christmas Eve, but she said she couldn't stop others from attending the protest, NBC News reported.
Lawyers for the nation's largest mall had requested a temporary restraining order to prevent the Black Lives Matter protest planned for Wednesday, in hopes of avoiding a repeat of the massive demonstration that disrupted business and closed stores in the mall last December.
Hennepin County District Court Judge Karen Janisch barred three protest organizers named as defendants in the mall's lawsuit from attending the demonstration, but she limited her order to them. The mall had sought to block the entire Black Lives Matter group from protesting.
"The Court does not have a sufficient basis to issue an injunction as to Black Lives Matters or to unidentified persons who may be acting as its agents or in active concert with the Black Lives Matters movement," she wrote.
The judge also denied the mall's request to order the organizers to remove posts about the protest from social media and to alert followers that the demonstration had been canceled.
