These Santa babies say they have a constitutional right … to paaaartaay! And now they’ve hired a big-gun lawyer to prove it.
SantaCon — the group that annually exposes New Yorkers to the drunken shenanigans of thousands of red-suited, fake-bearded pub crawlers — have hired civil liberties lawyer Norman Siegel in a bid to make their annual bacchanal a city-sanctioned event.
SantaCon organizers — who were banned from hipster-loving Bushwick, Brooklyn this year after drawing complaints about participants publicly urinating, vomiting and blocking streets and sidewalks — are turning to Siegel for advice on how to “transition from a raucous bar crawl to a citywide event,” organizers said.
Siegel told The Post he plans to meet with cops and city officials and to dole out advice to participants about how to “express themselves” without breaking rules.
“They want to reduce whatever negative aspect the event has created in the past,” Siegel told The Post.
“I look forward to working with them to guarantee their activities are respected and are in accordance with the First Amendment,” said the former NYCLU lawyer, who recently repped quarantine-breaking Ebola nurse Kaci Hickox.
Siegel will hit the streets — sans a Santa getup — with event organizers on Saturday, when they hit the streets for the annual drinking binge, to size up what naughty Santas need to stop doing.
“I’m not going to condone [public urination or vomiting]. They need to eliminate these kind of activities. Urinating on the street is not protected by the First Amendment,” Siegel said.
Early next year, Siegel and SantaCon organizers plan to meet with cops and city officials to get approval for “parade and festival-like options,” much like the Halloween Parade, which went legit in 1985, SantaCon organizers said.
Siegel will also consult with organizers on how to avoid racking up infractions during the pub crawl, he said.
“You can’t take up the whole sidewalk … If you don’t allow people to walk on the sidewalk, [police] can arrest you and give you a disorderly conduct charge,” said Siegel.
And no drinking on the train ride to the event, either. Metro North and LIRR announced Wednesday that alcohol will be banned from its commuter trains in preparation for SantaCon.
No boozing will be allowed on LIRR trains from 11 p.m. Friday through noon Sunday. On Metro North trains, alcohol will be banned from 9 a.m Saturday to 9 a.m. Sunday.
Cops plan to patrol stations and trains to confiscate booze and issue fines up to $50.
The event location will be announced Friday.
“While this event will always poke fun at society and the overly commercialized aspects of the holiday (culture jamming), Santa and the Elves are working closely with city officials, the Parks Department and NYPD on better formats to manage the event while growing it as a much beloved annual tradition for the city,” a SantaCon organizer said in a statement Wednesday.
Last month, businesses in Bushwick revolted over the pub crawl coming to the area. Participants pulled out of the neighborhood and plan to meet in a yet-to-be-disclosed location somewhere in the city on Saturday.
