UPDATE: ACLU Says Jones Ruling Was 'Blatantly Unconstitutional'

Florida Pastor Terry Jones will get his protest, he told The Detroit News Saturday morning at the Detroit Metro Airport before boarding a plane to leave Michigan. And moreover, he announced plans to file a lawsuit against the Wayne County prosecutor's office and other entities within the next week.

Jones said Friday on a break at the that he planned to return to Dearborn's to protest Friday, April 29, if his Good Friday plans were thwarted.

However, Jones and his associate Wayne Sapp were arrested for refusing to post a $1 bond ordered by Judge Mark Somers, who also said that they must stay away from the mosque for three years.

Jones told The Detroit News that because he is filing a lawsuit, he will stay within the confines of the law and hold his demonstration within the free speech zone at Dearborn's when he returns at 5 p.m. next Friday.

Jones said he will be working with the Thomas More Law Center of Ann Arbor.

The ACLU of Michigan, for one, believes that the court wronged Jones in their decision to bar him from speaking in front of the mosque.

"We believe the prosecutor’s office and the Dearborn court has turned the first amendment on its head," ACLU communications director Rana Elmir said. "The judge should have dismissed this case (Thursday). Instead he played right into Mr. Jones’ hand, and gave them a platform."

Moreover, the prevention of Jones' speech constitutes prior restraint–a historically difficult judgment to levy against a person or organization.

"He’s being punished for speech that has never occurred," Elmir said. "That’s blatantly unconstitutional. There’s no question about it. His speech is distasteful and it’s offensive, but no one should face jail time for their ideas."

Elmir also pointed out that there are several court cases in which similar issues have gone before a judge, and free speech has won out. Most of them deal with something called a "Heckler's Veto," which Elmir explained is "when the government shuts down a speaker out of a fear that others’ reactions are going to be negative."

In Terminiello v. City of Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949), a speaker was arrested to prevent him from stirring up a crowd of 1,000 protesters.The Supreme Court, in a decision penned by Justice William Douglas, found that "freedom of speech, though not absolute, is nevertheless protected against censorship or punishment, unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest."

More recently–and in a case that the ACLU presented in their amicus brief to Dearborn's court during Jones' trial–Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement, 505 U.S. 123 (1992) considered the constitutionality of the county's ordinance allowing a fee to be levied against a controversial speaker or demonstrator based on what the cost would be to police the event.

In that case, the Supreme Court held that "speech cannot be financially burdened any more than it can be punished or banned simply because it might offend a hostile mob."

In the case of Jones, Elmir said, they believe the similarities are clear.

"We believe that the Supreme Court has actually been quite clear on this issue in regard to speech," she said. "The government cannot place a price on free speech in order to silence demonstrators in anticipation that others will react negatively to their speech."