I've been wondering what "unlawful assembly" really means and how it's determined. I turned to Tim Zick, a Constitutional expert and William & Mary law professors for some answers. Here's what I learned... 1/10

Virginia's unlawful assembly law used to be more vague than it already is. So much that an older statute was invalidated in the 1970s and replaced with the one in place now. 2/10

More on that here: https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2658&context=wmlr 3/10

Zick says the current law essentially refers to an instance when "3 or more people come together with a common intent to engage in violent or unlawful behavior if what they’re going to engage in is both imminent and likely to occur." 4/10

The prior version did not provide for *imminence and likelihood* which are First Amendment-based requirements needed to distinguish a peaceable assembly from one *likely* to result in an *immediate* public disorder. 5/10

The current statute also uses the phrase "persons of ordinary courage with well grounded fear of serious and immediate breaches of public safety." What does that mean? Per Zick: "there has to be some imminent and likely occurrence of public disorder." 6/10

Proving intent is another thing. Zick explained there has to be some kind of overt action or evidence, like emails or social media posts, that *prove* that the gathering was *intended* to be unlawful. 7/10

I reached out to the Virginia Association for the Chiefs of Police and asked how officers determine that a gathering is unlawful assembly and received this response: 8/

The unlawful assembly statutes for Virginia the spokesperson provided include the statute defining unlawful assembly, as well as § 18.2-412. Immunity of officers and others in quelling a riot or unlawful assembly. 9/

Now I am curious about what qualifies as "reasonably necessary under all the circumstances." That is another question worth exploring... 10/10