The American Civil Liberties Union has come down in favor of legislation now before the City Council that seeks to amend the regulations that govern "expressive activities" in public parks. Considering the ACLU aversion to fiddling with free speech, its support tells you that the current rules must need improvement and that there could be a rational basis for the bill.

Just how much improvement became clear last year when Jamie and Tess Meier, a Maui couple, joined in the National Go Topless Day protest and were cited not for the wife’s attire — there was no explicit ban of female toplessness — but because they violated the city’s requirement for a permit for meetings or gatherings of two or more persons in a city park.

Most people were surprised to find such a ludicrous requirement on the books. But rather than suing, the ACLU decided that the approaching Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting last November provided an opportune moment to clarify the rules of public protest. In the months that followed, the organization hammered out a settlement with city lawyers on more reasonable regulations that would apply to city parks.

The legislation, Bill 38, attempts to resolve issues raised in that negotiation. It also makes amendments sought since 2001, when the U.S. District Court settled a lawsuit sparked by protests held during the Asian Development Bank conference here. There’s a strong rationale for its passage, making these changes at long last.

According to the ACLU, its terms have broad precedence in previous cases, all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Here are some of the key elements:

» The bill defines "expressive activity" as one of the public undertakings that are subject to regulation, a list that also includes camping, picnicking and sporting events.

» It sets reasonable boundaries that would allow for spontaneous "expressive activities" without organizers first securing a permit. Specifically, it sets out that an activity "occasioned by news or affairs coming into public knowledge within 48 hours" of the event, regardless of its attendance, would not need a permit, though its organizer would be required to give the city advance written notice "as soon as practicable."

» It also establishes a far higher threshold for the number of participants that would trigger the need for a permit in the first place. At two larger parks — Ala Moana Regional Park and the "main central area" of Kapiolani Regional Park — any gathering of fewer than 150 people would not need a permit. In every other city park, the permit threshold would be set at 75 persons.

To some critics, this may sound like micro-managing human behavior. But courts have set the bar highest against interference with the content of speech. Efforts to regulate the "time, place and manner" of the speech is defensible, as long as government shows there’s a public interest at stake.

And there is a public interest — the maintenance of public safety and access to public property for other needs.

Clearly, government needs to take care whenever it sets out to regulate the exercise of rights protected in the U.S. Constitution. But the city administration, and the civil-liberties advocates who helped craft the language of this bill, seem to have done so with Bill 38.