A Canadian judge has ruled that giving someone the middle finger is a “God-given right.”
In doing so, the judge cleared a man of harassment charges in a neighborhood spat, the New York Post said.
“To be abundantly clear, it is not a crime to give someone the finger,” Judge Dennis Galiatsatos wrote in a 26-page decision dated 24 February,” according to The Guardian newspaper. “Flipping the proverbial bird is a God-given, charter-enshrined right that belongs to every red-blooded Canadian.”
The accused bird-flipper, Neall Epstein, a teacher, had been busted by the cops in May 2021 in the Montreal suburb of Beaconsfield for allegedly making death threats and for criminal harassment when he flipped off neighbor Michael Naccache.
The gesture "may not be civil, it may not be polite, it may not be gentlemanly... Nevertheless, it does not trigger criminal liability," Galiatsatos ruled, AFP reported.
He noted that despite common vernacular, "cases aren't actually thrown out," but that in this matter "the court is inclined to actually take the file and throw it out the window."
"Alas," Galiatsatos said, "the courtrooms of the Montreal courthouse do not have windows."
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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