Ruling Limits Protests Outside Supreme Court
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday upheld 65-year-old limits on protesters’ First Amendment rights to gather and wave signs on the grand plaza in front of the Supreme Court, reversing a district court ruling that had found the restrictions “plainly unconstitutional.”
A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled unanimously that restricting demonstrators to the wide sidewalks alongside the plaza was a reasonable limit to preserve the court’s decorum.
The ruling came in a case involving a man who was arrested in 2011 for protesting violence against minority groups on the court’s marble plaza. The appeals panel held that the plaza, with its tiered staircases leading to the pillared building’s formidable bronze doors, amounts to a “nonpublic forum” like the courthouse itself, a place not open to “expressive activity by the public.”
“The government retains substantially greater leeway to limit expressive conduct in such an area and to preserve the property for its intended purposes: here, as the actual and symbolic entryway to the nation’s highest court and the judicial business conducted within it,” the court wrote.
Perhaps anticipating that the case could ultimately come before the Supreme Court, the appeals court drew heavily from past Supreme Court writings and a 1983 ruling in particular, which generally upheld a 1949 law banning demonstrations on the court’s grounds but said protesters could use the sidewalks.
The opinion was written by Judge Sri Srinivasan, who was named to the appeals court by President Obama.
The appeals panel noted that the restrictions do not target specific viewpoints, but apply to all. And, it added, they “reasonably relate to the government’s long-recognized interests in preserving decorum in the area of a courthouse and in assuring the appearance (and actuality) of a judiciary uninfluenced by public opinion and pressure.”
The legal story has been different across the street at the Capitol, reflecting the sense that members of Congress should be sensitive to public pressure as the people’s representatives. In 1972, the Supreme Court struck down limits on protests on the Capitol grounds similar to those protecting the justices’ own turf.
Under the 1949 law, the limits on public expression on the court’s blockwide property originally extended to all four street curbs. In the early 1980s, the District of Columbia appeals court found the law unconstitutional. But the Supreme Court upheld it in 1983 with one change: The 50-foot-wide sidewalks are like those in any other city, it said, and “should be treated as such for First Amendment purposes.”
The current case was brought by Harold H. Hodge Jr. He was arrested in January 2011 after standing about 100 feet from the court’s doors and wearing a sign that read, “The U.S. Gov. Allows Police to Illegally Murder and Brutalize African-Americans and Hispanic People.” The charge against him was dismissed after Mr. Hodge agreed to stay away from the court grounds for six months.
He filed a lawsuit a year after his arrest, seeking to return to the plaza “and engage in peaceful, nondisruptive political speech.”
' Boy, for a while there we were sceered that regular commoners were gonna be able to get close enough to our Supreme castle that we might actually be forced to See them! And God forebid that we have to Hear them! Thank goodness for our BFF's over at the Court of Appeals! We privileged learned aristicratic fellows must keep these commoners in their 'place', and by golly, their 'place' is as far from us as we can possibly keep them. Yeah, see if we let'em get tooo close it would simply ruin our pristine 'Decorum', and pretty soon people would stop respecting our more than godly decision making process. Yeah, sure there's been some pretty idiotic one's coming outta this place but sometimes we get one right. Now don't write this down, but you know how the bunch of us are 'supposed' to be 'non-partison', non-political, un-biased, open minded, you know, stuff like that so that we can make rulings not based on our own individual biase's or personal feelings or agendas...but based more on common sense and 'rule of law', welllll...really...what a hoot! We are as political and agenda oriented as a politician! Hey, nothing gets past Us! Remember when we ruled in 2007 that protesters could stand closer than 35 feet to Abortion Clinics? Well that was a good one, no worry about screwing up Their 'pristine decorum' huh? But We have waaaay more 'decorum' than those folks do! We're always kidding each other that in 1789, we simply replaced the King! There's probably commoners out there who think they have a 'Constitutional Right' to protest anywhere on public property that they want to. Yep, that's right! Unless We say they Don't. That's the cool part of our job! We're what you might call 'Untouchables', we Make the 'rules', and we make darn sure those little 'rules' are followed. Annnnd... when We say, stay away from our castle, we Mean it, and to get the point across we just make a law that enforces it. Keeps the riff-raff out for sure! We just don't like all that silly sign waving, and yellin' fools out there, makes people think we don't do a good job around here! We like to think of our methods as 'self rule'. No body rules Us, but Us. Hmmm...wonder if we've made That a 'law' yet....' ;) ;)
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