ROWDY KIDS? A McDonald's not far from the University of Chicago sets aside some of its seating area for local high school kids. One of the kids sits outside the designated area, gets arrested, then gets exonerated. There will be a protest anyway.

The rally is intended to highlight how the McDonald's and other Hyde Park businesses have instituted policies that seem to criminalize young people in the neighborhood instead of embracing them, said Melissa Harris-Lacewell, [Catherine] Smith's aunt and a political science professor at the University of Chicago.

The legalities are interesting.

Jesse Choper, a constitutional law professor at the University of California at Berkeley Law School, said students are not a protected class of people; thus, he does not see how having a restricted seating area in a private business is unconstitutional.

"One, constitutional rights almost always limit the government, not a private restaurant," Choper said. "It would be a steep uphill fight to find that unconstitutional."

Or to find the creation of protected classes unconstitutional. There is equal protection. But some protection is more equal than others.