Loyalist marchers blocked from walking through a nationalist area in Northern Ireland today threatened legal action after accusing the RUC of double standards.
Orangemen who removed their collarettes in a failed bid to be allowed past police at Drumcree church in Portadown, Co Armagh, claimed they have the same rights as Catholic children escorted to Holy Cross school in north Belfast.
Portadown district spokesman Mr David Jones insisted: "We are talking about an equality issue here."
The Orangemen have staged ongoing protests every Sunday following services to show their anger at the ban on their annual march along the nationalist Garvaghy Road back to town.
The dispute has in the past flared into intense violence both in the town and across Northern Ireland.
But today they removed the trappings of their loyal order and returned to police lines in "ordinary civilian dress".
"The police have made an infringement on our human rights to be allowed to walk along a public footpath past the Garvaghy Road and into the centre of Portadown," Mr Jones insisted.
He pointed to the continuing stand off in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast, where Catholic schoolgirls receive RUC protection every day as they walk past loyalist protesters.
"The parallel being drawn is with Holy Cross, where police said no road or no footpath was owned by any one community," said Mr Jones.
"This is clearly double standards and we are planning legal action."
But Breandan Mac Cionnaith, spokesman for the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition, accused the Orange Order of conducting a publicity stunt.
"You cannot make an equation between Orange protests at Drumcree, which have seen a tremendous amount of violence, with four and five-year-old girls going to school.
"Those young children haven't been the cause of any violence, but the Orange Order has been at the centre of a lot of disturbances both in Portadown and elsewhere since 1996."