Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-13-05250/USCOURTS-caDC-13-05250-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 23, 2014 Decided August 28, 2015

No. 13-5250

HAROLD H. HODGE, JR.

APPELLEE

v.

PAMELA TALKIN, MARSHAL OF THE UNITED STATES SUPREME 

COURT, AND VINCENT H. COHEN, JR., ESQUIRE, IN HIS 

OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS ACTING UNITED STATES ATTORNEY,

APPELLANTS

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:12-cv-00104)

Beth S. Brinkmann, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause for appellants. 

On the briefs were Stuart F. Delery, Assistant Attorney 

General, Ronald C. Machen, Jr., U.S. Attorney, and Michael 

S. Raab and Daniel Tenny, Attorneys. Jane M. Lyons, 

Assistant U.S. Attorney, entered an appearance. 

Jeffrey L. Light argued the cause and filed the brief for 

appellee. 

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Arthur B. Spitzer was on the brief for amicus curiae 

American Civil Liberties Union of the National Capital Area 

in support of appellee.

Before: HENDERSON and SRINIVASAN, Circuit Judges, 

and WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge SRINIVASAN.

SRINIVASAN, Circuit Judge: For more than sixty-five 

years, a federal statute has restricted the public’s conduct of 

expressive activity within the building and grounds of the 

Supreme Court. The law contains two prohibitions within the 

same sentence. The first makes it unlawful “to parade, stand, 

or move in processions or assemblages in the Supreme Court 

Building or grounds” (the Assemblages Clause). The second 

makes it unlawful “to display in the Building and grounds a

flag, banner, or device designed or adapted to bring into 

public notice a party, organization, or movement” (the 

Display Clause). 40 U.S.C. § 6135. The statute defines the 

Supreme Court “grounds” to extend to the public sidewalks 

forming the perimeter of the city block that houses the Court. 

In United States v. Grace, 461 U.S. 171 (1983), the 

Supreme Court held the statute’s Display Clause 

unconstitutional as applied to the sidewalks at the edge of the 

grounds. The Court found “nothing to indicate to the public 

that these sidewalks are part of the Supreme Court grounds” 

or that they “are in any way different from other public 

sidewalks in the city.” Id. at 183. Like other public 

sidewalks, consequently, the sidewalks surrounding the Court 

qualify as a “public forum” for First Amendment purposes, an 

area in which “the government’s ability to permissibly restrict 

expressive conduct is very limited.” Id. at 177, 179-80. But 

the Court left for another day the constitutionality of the 

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statute’s application to the rest of the grounds, including the 

Court’s plaza: the elevated marble terrace running from the 

front sidewalk to the staircase that ascends to the Court’s 

main doors.

We confront that issue today. The plaintiff in this case, 

Harold Hodge, Jr., seeks to picket, leaflet, and make speeches 

in the Supreme Court plaza, with the aim of conveying to the 

Court and the public what he describes as “political 

messages” about the Court’s decisions. Hodge claims that the 

statute’s Assemblages and Display Clauses, by restricting his 

intended activities, violate his rights under the First 

Amendment. The district court, persuaded by his arguments, 

declared the statute unconstitutional in all its applications to 

the Court’s plaza. We disagree and conclude that the 

Assemblages and Display Clauses may be constitutionally 

enforced in the plaza.

In marked contrast to the perimeter sidewalks considered 

in Grace, the Supreme Court plaza distinctively “indicate[s] 

to the public”—by its materials, design, and demarcation from 

the surrounding area—that it is very much a “part of the 

Supreme Court grounds.” Id. at 183. The plaza has been 

described as the opening stage of “a carefully choreographed, 

climbing path that ultimately ends at the courtroom itself.” 

Statement Concerning the Supreme Court’s Front Entrance,

2009 J. Sup. Ct. U.S. 831, 831 (2010) (Breyer, J.). For that 

reason, the Court’s plaza—unlike the surrounding public 

sidewalks, but like the courthouse it fronts—is a “nonpublic 

forum,” an area not traditionally kept open for 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.

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Under the lenient First Amendment standards applicable 

to nonpublic forums, the government can impose reasonable 

restrictions on speech as long as it refrains from suppressing 

particular viewpoints. Neither the Assemblages Clause nor 

the Display Clause targets specific viewpoints. They ban 

demonstrations applauding the Court’s actions no less than 

demonstrations denouncing them. And both clauses

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 Supreme 

Court recently, in its just-completed Term, strongly reinforced 

the latter interest’s vitality, along with the government’s 

considerable latitude to secure its realization even through 

speech-restrictive measures. Williams-Yulee v. Fla. Bar, 135 

S. Ct. 1656 (2015). The statute’s reasonableness is reinforced

by the availability of an alternative site for expressive activity 

in the immediate vicinity: the sidewalk area directly in front 

of the Court’s plaza. We therefore uphold the statute’s 

constitutionality.

I.

A.

The federal statute in issue, 40 U.S.C. § 6135, makes it 

unlawful “to parade, stand, or move in processions or 

assemblages in the Supreme Court Building or grounds, or to 

display in the Building and grounds a flag, banner, or device 

designed or adapted to bring into public notice a party, 

organization, or movement.” Congress enacted the statute in 

1949. See Act of Aug. 18, 1949, ch. 49, 63 Stat. 616, 617

(1949) (current version at 40 U.S.C. § 6135) (originally 

codified at id. § 13k). Another provision defines “the 

Supreme Court grounds” to extend to the curbs of the four 

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streets fixing the boundary of the city block in which the 

Court is situated. 40 U.S.C. § 6101(b). The statute thus

encompasses “not only the building,” but also “the plaza and 

surrounding promenade, lawn area, and steps,” together with 

“[t]he sidewalks comprising the outer boundaries of the Court 

grounds.” Grace, 461 U.S. at 179.

The front of the Supreme Court grounds, from the street 

to the building, appears as follows (according to the record in 

this case and sources of which we take judicial notice, see 

Fed. R. Evid. 201(b); Oberwetter v. Hilliard, 639 F.3d 545, 

552 n.4 (D.C. Cir. 2011)). The Court’s main entrance faces 

west towards First Street Northeast, across which sits the 

United States Capitol. Eight marble steps, flanked on either 

side by marble candelabra, ascend from the concrete sidewalk 

along First Street Northeast to the Court’s elevated marble 

plaza: an oval terrace that is 252 feet long (at the largest part 

of the oval) and 98 feet wide (inclusive of the front eight 

steps). Decl. of Timothy Dolan, Deputy Chief of the Supreme 

Court Police, ¶ 6 (Dolan Decl.) (J.A. 17-18). The terrace is 

“paved in gray and white marble” in “a pattern of alternating 

circles and squares similar to that of the floor of the Roman 

Pantheon.” Fred J. Maroon & Suzy Maroon, The Supreme 

Court of the United States 36 (1996). The plaza contains two 

fountains, two flagpoles, and six marble benches. Another 

thirty-six steps lead from the plaza to the building’s portico 

and “the magnificent bronze doors that are the main entrance 

into the building.” Id. at 38. A low marble wall surrounds the 

plaza and also encircles the rest of the building. And the 

plaza’s white marble matches the marble that makes up the 

low wall, the two staircases, the fountains, and the building’s

façade and columns. Pamela Scott & Antoinette J. Lee, 

Buildings of the District of Columbia 138 (1993).

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Supreme Court Building, Architect of the Capitol, 

http://www.aoc.gov/capitol-buildings/supreme-court-building 

(last visited Aug. 20, 2015).

B.

Prior challenges to § 6135 and related provisions form 

the legal backdrop for the case we consider today. Section 

6135’s restrictions on expressive activity in the Supreme 

Court grounds mirror a parallel statute restricting the same 

activity in the grounds of the United States Capitol. See 40 

U.S.C. § 5104(f) (originally codified at id. § 193g). The 

statute applicable to the Capitol became the subject of a 

constitutional challenge in Jeannette Rankin Brigade v. Chief 

of Capitol Police, 342 F. Supp. 575 (D.D.C. 1972). There, a 

three-judge court declared the statute unconstitutional under

the First and Fifth Amendments, enjoining the Capitol Police 

from enforcing it. Id. at 587-88. The court ruled that the 

government’s interest in maintaining decorum failed to justify

a ban on political demonstrations outside the building housing 

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the nation’s elected representatives. Id. at 585. The Supreme 

Court summarily affirmed. Chief of the Capitol Police v. 

Jeannette Rankin Brigade, 409 U.S. 972 (1972).

A few years later, the statute applicable to the Supreme 

Court grounds also came under attack in the courts. The 

plaintiffs, Mary Grace and Thaddeus Zywicki, experienced

run-ins with the Supreme Court Police when engaged in 

expressive activity on the public sidewalk fronting the Court

along First Street. Grace, 461 U.S. at 173-74. Zywicki had 

distributed written material to passersby on multiple

occasions, including articles calling for the removal of unfit 

judges and handbills discussing human rights in Central 

American countries. Id. Grace had stood on the sidewalk 

holding a sign displaying the text of the First Amendment. Id.

at 174. The district court declined to reach the merits of 

Grace and Zywicki’s suit, Grace v. Burger, 524 F. Supp. 815, 

819-20 (D.D.C. 1980); but our court did, declaring the statute

unconstitutional on its face in all of its applications to the 

Court grounds, Grace v. Burger, 665 F.2d 1193, 1205-06

(D.C. Cir. 1981). The Supreme Court affirmed our judgment 

in part and vacated it in part. Grace, 461 U.S. at 184. Given 

the decision’s obvious salience to our consideration of this 

case, we review the Court’s analysis in some detail.

Before addressing the merits, the Supreme Court 

significantly narrowed the case in two ways. First, the Court 

noted that the conduct giving rise to the challenge—solitary 

leafleting on Zywicki’s part, and solitary sign-holding on 

Grace’s—could violate only the statute’s Display Clause, not 

the Assemblages Clause. Id. at 175. The Court thus

understood the decision under review to be confined to the 

Display Clause. Id. at 175 & n.5. Second, the Court decided, 

based on the location of Grace’s and Zywicki’s past conduct,

that their “controversy” only concerned the “right to use the 

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public sidewalks surrounding the Court building” to engage in 

expressive activity. Id. at 175. The Court therefore chose to 

resolve “only whether the proscriptions of [the statute] are 

constitutional as applied to the public sidewalks,” without 

addressing the constitutionality of the statute’s application to 

the remainder of the Court’s statutorily defined grounds. Id.

The Court then set out to determine the character of the 

sidewalks in question for purposes of the “forum” taxonomy 

used to assess the constitutionality of speech restrictions on 

public property. Under that taxonomy, the Court explained,

“‘public places’ historically associated with the free exercise 

of expressive activities, such as streets, sidewalks, and parks, 

are considered, without more, to be ‘public forums.’” Id. at 

177. “In such places, the government’s ability to permissibly 

restrict expressive conduct is very limited,” such that “an 

absolute prohibition on a particular type of expression will be 

upheld only if narrowly drawn to accomplish a compelling 

governmental interest.” Id. On the other hand, in public 

property constituting a “nonpublic forum,” the government 

enjoys significantly greater latitude to regulate expressive 

activity, including the ability “in some circumstances” to “ban

the entry . . . of all persons except those who have legitimate 

business on the premises.” Id. at 178.

Applying those principles to the “sidewalks comprising

the outer boundaries of the Court grounds,” the Court 

reasoned that they “are indistinguishable from any other 

sidewalks in Washington, D.C.,” and there is “no reason why 

they should be treated any differently.” Id. at 179. 

“Sidewalks, of course, are among those areas of public 

property that traditionally have been held open to the public 

for expressive activities and are clearly within those areas of 

public property that may be considered, generally without 

further inquiry, to be public forum property.” Id. With 

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respect to the perimeter sidewalks specifically, the Court 

observed, there is “no separation, no fence, and no indication 

whatever to persons stepping from the street to the curb and 

sidewalks . . . that they have entered some special type of 

enclave,” and “nothing to indicate to the public that these 

sidewalks are part of the Supreme Court grounds.” Id. at 180, 

183. “Traditional public forum property” of that variety, the 

Court explained, “will not lose its historically recognized 

character for the reason that it abuts government property that 

has been dedicated to a use other than as a forum for public 

expression.” Id. at 180. The Court therefore held that the 

“public sidewalks forming the perimeter of the Supreme 

Court grounds . . . are public forums and should be treated as 

such for First Amendment purposes.” Id.

The Court next assessed the constitutionality of the 

Display Clause under the heightened standards applicable to 

public forums. It examined the necessity of the Display 

Clause’s restrictions by reference to two asserted 

governmental interests: first, the interest in maintaining 

“proper order and decorum” in the Supreme Court building 

and grounds and in protecting “persons and property therein”; 

and second, the interest in avoiding the “appear[ance] to the 

public that the Supreme Court is subject to outside influence 

or that picketing or marching, singly or in groups, is an 

acceptable or proper way of appealing to or influencing the 

Supreme Court.” Id. at 182-83. The Court did not doubt the 

importance and legitimacy of those interests. Id. But it found

a “total ban” on leafleting and sign-holding on the 

surrounding public sidewalks unnecessary to promote them. 

Id. For instance, without any indication “to the public” that 

the “sidewalks are part of the Supreme Court grounds or are 

in any way different from other public sidewalks,” the Court 

“doubt[ed] that the public would draw a different inference 

from a lone picketer carrying a sign on the sidewalks around 

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the building than it would from a similar picket on the 

sidewalks across the street.” Id. at 183. The Court therefore

declared the Display Clause unconstitutional as applied to the 

public sidewalks surrounding the Court, but it vacated our 

court’s invalidation of the statute with regard to the remainder 

of the grounds. Id. at 183-84.

C.

Although Grace concerned the Display Clause alone, the 

Supreme Court Police ceased enforcement of both the Display 

and Assemblages Clauses on the perimeter sidewalks. Dolan 

Decl. ¶ 5 (J.A. 17). The Police have continued to enforce 

both clauses elsewhere in the Supreme Court building and

grounds, including in the Court’s plaza. This case arises from 

the enforcement of the statute in the plaza.

On January 28, 2011, Harold Hodge, Jr., stood in the 

plaza approximately 100 feet from the building’s front doors. 

Am. Compl. ¶¶ 17, 20 (J.A. 10). He hung from his neck a 

two-by-three-foot sign displaying the words “The U.S. Gov. 

Allows Police To Illegally Murder And Brutalize African 

Americans And Hispanic People.” Id. ¶ 18 (J.A. 10). After a 

few minutes, a Supreme Court Police officer approached 

Hodge and told him he was violating the law. Hodge declined 

to leave. After three more warnings, the officer arrested him. 

On February 4, 2011, Hodge was charged with violating 40 

U.S.C. § 6135. He entered into an agreement with the 

government under which he promised to stay away from the 

Supreme Court grounds for six months in exchange for 

dismissal of the charge, which occurred in September 2011.

In January 2012, Hodge filed the present action in federal 

district court. His complaint alleges that he “desires to return 

to the plaza area . . . and engage in peaceful, non-disruptive 

political speech and expression in a similar manner to his 

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activity on January 28, 2011.” Id. ¶ 28 (J.A. 12). In addition

to again wearing a sign, Hodge wishes to “picket, hand out 

leaflets, sing, chant, and make speeches, either by himself or 

with a group of like-minded individuals.” Id. ¶ 29 (J.A. 12). 

Hodge says that the “political message that [he] would like to 

convey would be directed both at the Supreme Court and the 

general public, and would explain how decisions of the 

Supreme Court have allowed police misconduct and 

discrimination against racial minorities to continue.” Id. And 

he states that he desires to engage in those activities 

“immediately” but is “deterred and chilled” from doing so by

“the terms of 40 U.S.C. § 6135” and by his prior arrest and 

charge. Id. ¶ 30 (J.A. 12).

Hodge’s complaint asserts a series of constitutional 

challenges under the First and Fifth Amendments. First, he 

claims that the Assemblages and Display Clauses amount to 

unconstitutional restrictions of speech. Second, he claims that 

both clauses are overbroad. Finally, he claims that both 

clauses are unconstitutionally vague. (The complaint also 

raises claims alleging that the Supreme Court Police 

selectively enforce the law in a manner favoring certain 

viewpoints, but the district court did not pass on those claims 

and Hodge does not press them in this appeal.) As relief, 

Hodge seeks a declaration of § 6135’s invalidity “on its face, 

and as applied to [Hodge],” and a permanent injunction 

barring the government defendants (the Marshal of the 

Supreme Court and the United States Attorney for the District 

of Columbia) from enforcing the statute against Hodge or 

others. Id. p. 10 (J.A. 15).

The district court, finding the statute “plainly 

unconstitutional on its face,” granted summary judgment in 

favor of Hodge. Hodge v. Talkin, 949 F. Supp. 2d 152, 176 & 

n.24 (D.D.C. 2013). In a thorough opinion, the court 

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invalidated the statute under the First Amendment based on 

two grounds. The court first held that, regardless of whether 

the Supreme Court plaza is considered a public forum or a 

nonpublic forum, the statute amounts to an unreasonable 

restriction of speech as concerns the plaza. Id. at 182-85. 

Second, the court found the statute unconstitutionally 

overbroad in light of the potential sweep of its prohibitions. 

In that regard, the court examined a range of hypothetical

applications of the Assemblages and Display Clauses in the 

plaza which it found to be troubling. Id. at 187-89. The 

court’s result was to declare § 6135 “unconstitutional and 

void as applied to the Supreme Court plaza.” Id. at 198. The 

court declined to reach Hodge’s alternative challenges, 

including his vagueness claim. Id. at 176 n.24.

The government appeals the district court’s grant of 

summary judgment. We review that court’s legal 

determinations de novo. Lederman v. United States, 291 F.3d 

36, 41 (D.C. Cir. 2002).

II.

Before addressing the merits of Hodge’s constitutional

challenges, we initially assure ourselves of his standing for 

purposes of satisfying Article III’s case-or-controversy 

requirement. The question is whether he demonstrates an 

“injury in fact” that is “fairly . . . trace[able]” to the statute’s 

challenged provisions. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 

U.S. 555, 560 (1992). 

There is no dispute about Hodge’s standing to challenge 

the Display Clause. He has been arrested and charged for 

displaying a political sign while standing in the plaza, and he

would do so again “immediately” if not for his fear of another 

arrest. Am. Compl. ¶¶ 28-30 (J.A. 12). The government does 

not contest those facts. Given the Supreme Court Police’s 

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policy of enforcing § 6135 in the plaza, see Dolan Decl. ¶ 7 

(J.A. 18), there is a “substantial risk” of another arrest and 

charge if Hodge were to act on his stated intentions. That 

suffices to demonstrate a cognizable injury vis-à-vis the 

Display Clause. See Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, 134 

S. Ct. 2334, 2341 (2014).

Hodge’s solitary display of a sign, however, did not

violate the statute’s Assemblages Clause—the prohibition on 

“parad[ing], stand[ing], or mov[ing] in processions or 

assemblages.” 40 U.S.C. § 6135. The government maintains 

that the complaint’s allegations fail sufficiently to establish

Hodge’s desire to engage in future conduct that would bring 

him within that prohibition’s scope. The sole allegation

bearing on his standing to challenge the Assemblages Clause

conveys his desire “to return to the plaza area . . . and picket, 

hand out leaflets, sing, chant, and make speeches, either by 

himself or with a group of like-minded individuals.” Am. 

Compl. ¶ 29 (J.A. 12) (emphasis added). The allegation’s

“either/or” phrasing, the government submits, renders 

Hodge’s future intent to violate the Assemblages Clause 

unduly speculative: Hodge might return with a group of 

people, but then again, he might go it alone.

Hodge’s articulation of his intentions suffices to establish 

his standing under our precedents. In Lederman v. United 

States, we considered a plaintiff’s standing to bring a First 

Amendment challenge to a regulation banning a laundry list 

of “demonstration activit[ies]” (including “parading, 

picketing, leafleting, holding vigils, sit-ins, or other 

expressive conduct or speechmaking”) in designated “nodemonstration zones” within the Capitol grounds. 291 F.3d at 

39. The plaintiff had been arrested and charged after

leafleting on the Capitol’s East Front sidewalk. Id. at 39-40. 

In his complaint asserting a facial challenge to the entire 

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regulation, the plaintiff alleged that he “wishe[d] to come to 

Washington in the future . . . to engage in constitutionallyprotected demonstration activity in the no-demonstration 

zone—including, but not necessarily limited to, leafleting and 

holding signs.” Id. at 40.

Based on the plaintiff’s arrest for leafleting and “his 

intent to return to the Capitol Grounds to engage in other 

expressive activity,” we found that he had standing to

challenge the entire regulation. Id. at 41. If the Lederman 

plaintiff’s stated desire to engage in prohibited activity 

“including, but not necessarily limited to” leafleting and

holding signs adequately established his intention to violate 

other parts of the regulation, Hodge’s plans to return to the 

plaza “either by himself or with a group of like-minded 

individuals” suffices as well. 

We therefore proceed to address the merits of Hodge’s 

challenges to both the Display and Assemblages Clauses.

III.

Hodge attacks 40 U.S.C. § 6135 as unconstitutional “on 

its face and as applied to his desired activities.” Am. Compl. 

¶ 1 (J.A. 6). In granting summary judgment, the district court 

examined what it conceived to be two separate First

Amendment arguments. First, the court found § 6135 facially 

unconstitutional as an unreasonable restriction of expressive 

activity on public property. Second, the court determined that

§ 6135 is overbroad. With respect to both conclusions, 

however, the court confined its analysis to the Supreme Court 

plaza. See Hodge, 949 F. Supp. 2d at 198.

We address below whether Hodge’s overbreadth claim 

affords a separate basis for relief independent of his claim that 

§ 6135 is an unreasonable restriction of speech. See Part IV,

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infra. Regarding the restriction-of-speech claim, though, one 

might ask at the outset whether it is best considered a “facial”

or an “as-applied” challenge. We briefly note the question 

because the distinction sometimes affects the applicable 

standards. 

The Supreme Court often cautions that a facial challenge 

can succeed only if “‘no set of circumstances exists under 

which the [statute] would be valid,’ i.e., that the law is 

unconstitutional in all of its applications.” Wash. State 

Grange v. Wash. State Republican Party, 552 U.S. 442, 449

(2008) (quoting United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745 

(1987)). Yet the Court has also indicated that the standard for 

facial invalidity may be less stringent in some situations, 

instead turning on whether the statute lacks any “plainly 

legitimate sweep.” See id. (citing Washington v. Glucksberg, 

521 U.S. 702, 739-40 & n.7 (1997) (Stevens, J., concurring in 

judgments)); United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. 460, 472 

(2010). An ordinary as-applied challenge, by contrast, asks a 

court to assess a statute’s constitutionality with respect to the 

particular set of facts before it. See, e.g., FEC v. Wisc. Right 

to Life, Inc., 551 U.S. 449, 456-57 (2007).

Hodge’s challenge eludes ready classification. In 

examining Hodge’s claim that the statute impermissibly 

restricts speech, we will naturally hypothesize applications of 

the law beyond his own particular conduct. On the other 

hand, notwithstanding Hodge’s entreaties to invalidate the 

statute on its “face,” he raises no meaningful challenge to the 

statute’s application anywhere other than the plaza (within the 

Supreme Court building, for instance). Hodge’s claim thus 

might be conceived of as “as-applied” in the sense that he 

confines his challenge to the statute’s application to a 

particular site, but “facial” in the sense that he asks us to 

examine circumstances beyond his individual case.

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There is no need for us to definitively resolve those 

questions of characterization. The “distinction between facial 

and as-applied challenges is not so well defined that it has 

some automatic effect.” Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 

310, 331 (2010). For our purposes, it suffices to say that we 

adhere to the Supreme Court’s approach in Grace: we will 

examine the validity of the statute’s application to a particular 

portion of the Supreme Court grounds—the plaza—looking 

beyond the plaintiff’s particular conduct when assessing the 

statute’s fit. See United States v. Nat’l Treasury Emps.

Union, 513 U.S. 454, 487 (1995) (O’Connor, J., concurring in 

judgment in part and dissenting in part) (describing Grace as 

a case in which the Court “declared a statute invalid as to a 

particular application without striking the entire provision that 

appears to encompass it,” though noting that the Court’s

“jurisprudence in this area is hardly a model of clarity”). 

Having noted the “facial/as-applied” doctrinal undercard, 

we can now move on to the main event. In asking us to 

declare § 6135 unconstitutional in all its applications in the 

Supreme Court plaza, Hodge’s claim implicates “the gravest 

and most delicate duty that [courts are] called on to perform”: 

invalidation of an Act of Congress. Blodgett v. Holden, 275 

U.S. 142, 147-48 (1927) (Holmes, J., concurring). We are not 

compelled to do so here. We reach that conclusion by 

examining Hodge’s challenge in accordance with the 

Supreme Court’s analysis in Grace. First, we assess whether 

the Supreme Court plaza is a public forum or a nonpublic 

forum, determining that the plaza is the latter. Next, we apply

the First Amendment rules applicable in nonpublic forums. 

Under those relaxed standards, we conclude that the statute

reasonably (and hence permissibly) furthers the government’s 

interests in maintaining decorum and order in the entryway to 

the nation’s highest court and in preserving the appearance 

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and actuality of a judiciary unswayed by public opinion and 

pressure.

A.

Hodge’s desired activities in the Supreme Court plaza—

picketing, leafleting, and speechmaking—lie at the core of the 

First Amendment’s protections. Still, he does not have an 

automatic entitlement to engage in that conduct wherever (and 

whenever) he would like. Rather, the “Government, ‘no less 

than a private owner of property, has the power to preserve 

the property under its control for the use to which it is 

lawfully dedicated.’” Grace, 461 U.S. at 178 (quoting 

Adderley v. Florida, 385 U.S. 39, 47 (1966)). That principle 

finds voice in the Supreme Court’s “forum analysis,” which 

“determine[s] when a governmental entity, in regulating 

property in its charge, may place limitations on speech.” 

Christian Legal Soc’y Chapter of the Univ. of Cal., Hastings 

Coll. of the Law v. Martinez, 561 U.S. 661, 679 (2010). 

Some public property, as a matter of tradition, is deemed 

dedicated to the exercise of expressive activity by the public. 

The “quintessential” examples of such traditional public 

forums are streets, sidewalks, and parks, all of which, “time 

out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, 

communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing 

public questions.” Perry Educ. Ass’n v. Perry Local 

Educators’ Ass’n, 460 U.S. 37, 45 (1983) (quoting Hague v. 

CIO, 307 U.S. 496, 515 (1939) (opinion of Roberts, J.)). A 

public forum can also arise by specific designation (rather 

than tradition) when “government property that has not 

traditionally been regarded as a public forum is intentionally 

opened up for that purpose.” Pleasant Grove City v. 

Summum, 555 U.S. 460, 469 (2009). The government “must 

respect the open character” of a public forum. Oberwetter, 

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639 F.3d at 551. “In such places,” accordingly, “the 

government’s ability to permissibly restrict expressive 

conduct is very limited.” Grace, 461 U.S. at 177.

A nonpublic forum, by contrast, is public property that is 

“not by tradition or designation a forum for public 

communication.” Perry, 460 U.S. at 46. “Limitations on 

expressive activity conducted on this . . . category of property 

must survive only a much more limited review.” Int’l Soc’y

for Krishna Consciousness, Inc. v. Lee, 505 U.S. 672, 679 

(1992). In a nonpublic forum, a “challenged regulation need 

only be reasonable, as long as the regulation is not an effort to 

suppress the speaker’s activity due to disagreement with the 

speaker’s view.” Id.; see Perry, 460 U.S. at 46.

We find the Supreme Court plaza to be a nonpublic 

forum. The Court’s analysis in Grace directly points the way 

to that conclusion. In finding that the sidewalks marking the 

perimeter of the Court’s grounds are a public forum, the Court 

emphasized that there is “no separation, no fence, and no 

indication whatever to persons stepping from the street to the 

curb and sidewalks” that “they have entered some special type 

of enclave.” 461 U.S. at 180. Although certain sidewalks

might constitute nonpublic forums if they serve specific 

purposes for particular public sites (such as providing solely

for internal passage within those sites, see United States v. 

Kokinda, 497 U.S. 720, 727-30 (1990) (plurality opinion); 

Initiative & Referendum Inst. v. U.S. Postal Serv., 685 F.3d 

1066, 1071 (D.C. Cir. 2012)), the Grace Court viewed the 

Supreme Court’s perimeter sidewalks to be “indistinguishable 

from any other sidewalks in Washington, D.C.,” 461 U.S. at 

179. The Court therefore saw “nothing to indicate to the 

public that these sidewalks are part of the Supreme Court 

grounds” in particular. Id. at 183. As a result, there is “no 

reason why they should be treated any differently” from the 

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mine-run of public sidewalks, which are “considered, 

generally without further inquiry, to be public forum 

property.” Id. at 179. 

Grace’s analysis makes evident that the Supreme Court 

plaza, in contrast to the perimeter sidewalks, is a nonpublic 

forum. The Court considered it of pivotal significance that 

there was “nothing to indicate to the public that these 

sidewalks are part of the Supreme Court grounds,” id. at 183, 

or that “they have entered some special type of enclave,” id. 

at 180. The opposite is very much true of the Court’s plaza.

The plaza’s appearance and design vividly manifest its 

architectural integration with the Supreme Court building, as 

well as its separation from the perimeter sidewalks and 

surrounding area. The plaza is elevated from the sidewalk by 

a set of marble steps. A low, patterned marble wall—the 

same type of wall that encircles the rest of the building—

surrounds the plaza platform and defines its boundaries. And 

the plaza and the steps rising to it are composed of white 

marble that contrasts sharply with the concrete sidewalk in 

front of it, but that matches the staircase ascending to the 

Court’s front doors and the façade of the building itself. As 

one account explains, perhaps with a degree of romanticism, 

the “unusually high mica content” of the marble produces 

“[r]eflections . . . so brilliant on sunny days that they almost 

blind the viewer.” Scott & Lee, supra, at 138.

From the perspective of a Court visitor (and also the 

public), the “physical and symbolic pathway to [the Supreme 

Court] chamber begins on the plaza.” Id. Cass Gilbert, the 

Supreme Court’s architect, conceived of the plaza, staircase, 

and portico leading to the massive bronze entry doors as an 

integrated “processional route” culminating in the courtroom. 

Id. Commenting on that design, a sitting Justice has written 

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that, “[s]tarting at the Court’s western plaza, Gilbert’s plan 

leads visitors along a carefully choreographed, climbing path 

that ultimately ends at the courtroom itself.” Statement 

Concerning the Supreme Court’s Front Entrance, 2009 J. 

Sup. Ct. U.S. at 831 (Breyer, J.).

In short, whereas there was “nothing to indicate to the 

public that [the] sidewalks are part of the Supreme Court 

grounds,” Grace, 461 U.S. 183, there is everything to indicate 

to the public that the plaza is an integral part of those grounds.

The plaza’s features convey in many distinctive ways that a 

person has “entered some special type of enclave.” Id. at 180. 

And in serving as what amounts to the elevated front porch of 

the Supreme Court building (complete with a surrounding 

railing), the plaza—like the building from which it extends, 

and to which it leads—is a nonpublic forum.

The Court in Grace, in fact, appeared to foreshadow 

precisely that result. Referring to the Court’s perimeter 

sidewalks, Grace explained that “[t]raditional public forum

property” of that kind does “not lose its historically 

recognized character for the reason that it abuts government 

property that has been dedicated to a use other than as a forum 

for public expression.” Id. at 180. When it described the 

perimeter sidewalks as “abut[ting] government property that 

has been dedicated to a use other than as a forum for public 

expression,” the Court presumably had in mind the plaza. 

The plaza, after all, “abuts” the perimeter sidewalk marking

the front edge of the Supreme Court grounds along First 

Street Northeast. The Court thus seemed expressly to assume 

that its plaza is a nonpublic forum—i.e., property “dedicated 

to a use other than as a forum for public expression.”

That conclusion is consistent with the treatment of 

courthouses more generally. The area surrounding a 

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courthouse traditionally has not been considered a forum for 

demonstrations and protests. In Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 

559 (1965), the Supreme Court rejected a First Amendment 

challenge to a Louisiana law prohibiting picketing or parades 

“in or near” courthouses if aimed to impede the 

administration of justice or influence a court officer. Id. at 

560. The Court found there to be “no question that a State has 

a legitimate interest in protecting its judicial system from the 

pressures which picketing near a courthouse might create.” 

Id. at 562. 

Citing Cox, the three-judge court in Jeannette Rankin 

Brigade (which is “binding precedent” in light of the Supreme 

Court’s summary affirmance, Lederman, 291 F.3d at 41) 

observed that the “area surrounding a courthouse” may “be 

put off limits to parades and other political demonstrations.” 

342 F. Supp. at 583. Whereas the “fundamental function of a 

legislature in a democratic society assumes accessibility to 

[public] opinion,” the “judiciary does not decide cases by 

reference to popular opinion.” Id. at 584. As a result, while 

the grounds of the United States Capitol are considered a 

public forum, see id.; Lederman, 291 F.3d at 41-42, the 

grounds of a courthouse are not.

Going beyond the realm of courthouses, moreover, the 

Supreme Court plaza bears a family resemblance to another

plaza held not to be a public forum for expression by the 

general public: the plaza located in the Lincoln Center 

performing arts complex in Manhattan. See Hotel Emps. & 

Rest. Emps. Union, Local 100 v. City of N.Y. Dep’t of Parks & 

Recreation, 311 F.3d 534, 547-53 (2d Cir. 2002). That plaza 

is a large, paved “outdoor square that serves as the 

centerpiece of the Lincoln Center complex.” Id. at 540. Like 

the relationship of the Supreme Court plaza to the Court 

building, the Lincoln Center plaza’s “main purpose” is “to 

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serve as the ‘forecourt’ for the performing arts hall.” Id. at 

547. Although the plaza’s “design clearly invites passers-by 

to stroll through or linger,” the Second Circuit reasoned, 

“plazas that serve as forecourts in performing arts complexes 

are not the types of public spaces that have traditionally been 

dedicated to expressive uses.” Id. at 551-52. 

The court thus considered it “self-evident that permitting 

speech on all manner of public issues in the Plaza would 

compromise the City’s ability to establish a specialized space 

devoted to contemplation and celebration of the arts.” Id. at 

552. So too, here: opening the Supreme Court plaza to 

“speech on all manner of public issues,” id., would 

compromise the plaza’s function as an integrated forecourt for 

“contemplation of the Court’s central purpose, the 

administration of justice to all who seek it.” Statement 

Concerning the Supreme Court’s Front Entrance, 2009 J. 

Sup. Ct. U.S. at 831.

Importantly, the Supreme Court plaza’s status as a 

nonpublic forum is unaffected by the public’s unrestricted 

access to the plaza at virtually any time. Indeed, in Grace 

itself, the Court emphasized that “property is not transformed 

into ‘public forum’ property merely because the public is 

permitted to freely enter and leave the grounds at practically

all times.” 461 U.S. at 178; see Greer v. Spock, 424 U.S. 828, 

836 (1976). The Second Circuit therefore concluded that the 

Lincoln Center plaza is not a traditional public forum despite 

the fact that “public access to the Plaza is unrestricted” and 

non-patron pedestrians frequently “cross the Plaza en route to 

other destinations in the neighborhood.” Hotel Emps., 311 

F.3d at 540. The court reasoned that, notwithstanding the

ease and frequency of public access, visitors understand the 

plaza’s function in terms of the property to which it 

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corresponds and accordingly sense that they are not in “a 

typical . . . town square.” Id. at 550.

The same is true of open-air monuments held by this 

court to be nonpublic forums. See Oberwetter, 639 F.3d at 

553. As our court observed in reference to the interior of the 

Jefferson Memorial, “[t]hat the Memorial is open to the public 

does not alter its status as a nonpublic forum. Visitors are not 

invited for expressive purposes, but are free to enter only if 

they abide by the rules that preserve the Memorial’s solemn 

atmosphere.” Id. Although those visitors may “regularly talk 

loudly, make noise, and take and pose for photographs, . . . 

none of this conduct rises to the level of a conspicuous 

demonstration.” Id. at 552 (internal quotation marks and 

brackets omitted). Much the same could be said of the 

Supreme Court plaza.

While a nonpublic forum thus is not “transformed into 

‘public forum’ property” by virtue of the government’s 

permitting access for non-expressive purposes, Grace, 461 

U.S. at 178, the near converse is also true: a traditional

public forum is not transformed into nonpublic forum 

property by the expedient of the government’s restricting

access for expressive purposes. See, e.g., U.S. Postal Serv. v. 

Council of Greenburgh Civic Ass’ns, 453 U.S. 114, 133 

(1981); Lederman, 291 F.3d at 43. The Supreme Court has 

been clear that the government “may not by its own ipse dixit 

destroy the ‘public forum’ status of streets and parks which 

have historically been public forums.” Greenburgh Civic 

Ass’ns, 453 U.S. at 133. In Grace, accordingly, the statute’s 

restriction on expressive activity in an area defined to include 

the perimeter sidewalks did not itself transform the sidewalks

into a nonpublic forum. The Court explained that 

governmental attempts to “destr[oy]” public-forum status via 

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such restrictions are “presumptively impermissible.” 461 

U.S. at 179-80. 

While Hodge seeks to invoke that “ipse dixit” principle 

here, his effort is misdirected. The principle has no 

applicability with respect to the Supreme Court plaza because 

there is no background assumption—grounded in tradition—

that the property is a public forum. The plaza plainly is not a 

street or sidewalk. Nor is it a park. 

With regard to any suggestion that the Court’s plaza 

could be considered some kind of park, the Second Circuit 

held that the Lincoln Center plaza is not a park for purposes 

of rendering it a traditional public forum even though the 

City’s regulations define it as a “park” for purposes of 

establishing the Parks Department’s authority over it. Hotel 

Emps., 311 F.3d at 548-49 & n.10. We reached essentially 

the same conclusion concerning the Jefferson Memorial, 

which “is located within the National Park system.” 

Oberwetter, 639 F.3d at 552. “[O]ur country’s many national 

parks are too vast and variegated to be painted with a single 

brush for purposes of forum analysis,” we recognized, and 

many areas within national parks “never have been dedicated 

to free expression and public assembly.” Id. (quoting 

Boardley v. U.S. Dep’t of Interior, 615 F.3d 508, 515 (D.C. 

Cir. 2010)). Here, Hodge makes no argument that the 

Supreme Court plaza is defined as a “park” for any reason

under the law. And regardless, the plaza, like courthouse 

grounds in general, has never been dedicated to the public’s 

conduct of assemblages, expressive activity, and recreation in 

the manner of a traditional park.

None of this is to say that Congress could not choose to 

dedicate the Supreme Court plaza as a forum for the robust 

exercise of First Amendment activity by the general public. 

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The plaza could be transformed into a setting for 

demonstrations and the like. And if Congress were to open up 

the plaza as a public forum, the space would become subject 

to the same First Amendment rules that govern across the 

street on the grounds of the Capitol. See Summum, 555 U.S. 

at 469-70. 

But whereas the Capitol grounds are a public forum by 

requirement of the First Amendment, see Lederman, 291 F.3d 

at 41-42, the Supreme Court plaza would become a public 

forum by choice of Congress. The difference exists because 

“[j]udges are not politicians.” Williams-Yulee, 135 S. Ct. at 

1662. And although “[p]oliticians are expected to be 

appropriately responsive to the preferences” of the public, id. 

at 1667—and therefore are expected to accommodate public 

expression on the grounds of the legislative chamber, see 

Jeannette Rankin, 342 F. Supp. at 584-85—the “same is not 

true of judges,” Williams-Yulee, 135 S. Ct. at 1667. So while 

Congress could elect to dedicate the Court’s plaza as a public 

forum, Congress has not done so. To the contrary, Congress 

has restricted expressive activity in the plaza through statutes 

like § 6135.

Nor have the Supreme Court’s own enforcement 

practices transformed the plaza into a nonpublic forum. The 

Court’s allowance of two forms of highly circumscribed 

expressive activity in the plaza—attorneys and litigants 

addressing the media immediately after a Supreme Court 

argument, and the occasional granting of approval to conduct 

filming on the plaza for commercial or professional films 

relating to the Court, Dolan Decl. ¶ 9 (J.A. 18)—is 

immaterial. The “government does not create a public forum 

by inaction or by permitting limited discourse, but only by 

intentionally opening a nontraditional forum for public 

discourse.” Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Def. & Educ. Fund,

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473 U.S. 788, 802 (1985); see Arkansas Educ. Television 

Comm’n v. Forbes, 523 U.S. 666, 679 (1998); Greer, 424 

U.S. at 438 n.10.

For the same reason, it is of no moment that the Supreme 

Court Police in certain situations might opt to allow

demonstrators onto the plaza for a brief period, presumably in 

an effort to exercise enforcement authority with responsible 

(and viewpoint-neutral) discretion in unique circumstances. 

For instance, notwithstanding the Court Police’s usual 

practice of strict enforcement, see Dolan Decl. ¶¶ 5, 7, 9 (J.A. 

17, 18), the Police apparently did not attempt to prevent a 

crowd of about 200 demonstrators from briefly “surg[ing] up 

the off-limits steps of the U.S. Supreme Court” late one night 

last fall “as part of nationwide protests against a Missouri 

grand jury’s decision not to indict the police officer who 

fatally shot a Ferguson teenager.” Tony Mauro, Ferguson 

Protesters Swarm Steps of Supreme Court, Legal Times, Nov. 

25, 2014 (archived on LexisNexis). The protesters evidently 

moved on after about fifteen minutes, and the Police made no 

arrests. Id. The fact that the protesters made their way onto 

the plaza for a quarter of an hour did not somehow transform 

the plaza into a public forum for all time. Rather, the plaza

was then, and remains now, a nonpublic forum.

B.

Having concluded that the Supreme Court plaza is a 

nonpublic forum, we now examine whether the Assemblages 

and Display Clauses “survive . . . [the] much more limited 

review” governing speech restrictions in such areas. Lee, 505 

U.S. at 679. Under that review, the restrictions “need only be 

reasonable, as long as [they are] not an effort to suppress the 

speaker’s activity due to disagreement with the speaker’s 

view.” Id.

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There is no suggestion that either clause discriminates on 

the basis of viewpoint. The Assemblages Clause makes it 

unlawful “to parade, stand, or move in processions or 

assemblages,” and the Display Clause makes it unlawful to 

“display” a “flag, banner, or device designed or adapted to 

bring into public notice a party, organization, or movement.” 

40 U.S.C. § 6135. Whatever the scope of expressive activities 

within the reach of those prohibitions (a matter we explore in 

greater depth below), they operate without regard to the 

communication’s viewpoint. Demonstrations supporting the 

Court’s decisions and demonstrations opposing them are 

equally forbidden in the plaza.

The question, then, is whether the restrictions are 

reasonable in light of the government’s interest in preserving 

the property for its intended purposes. See Perry, 460 U.S. at 

46. We find that they are.

1.

The government puts forward two primary interests in 

support of § 6135’s application in the Supreme Court plaza. 

First, the government argues that the statute helps maintain 

the decorum and order befitting courthouses generally and the

nation’s highest court in particular. Second, the government 

contends that the statute promotes the appearance and 

actuality of a Court whose deliberations are immune to public 

opinion and invulnerable to public pressure. Precedent lies

with the government as to both interests.

With respect to the first, in Grace, the government relied 

on the statute’s purpose “to provide for the . . . maintenance 

of proper order and decorum” in the Supreme Court grounds. 

461 U.S. at 182. The Supreme Court concluded that the 

Display Clause bore “an insufficient nexus” to that interest 

under the strict standards applicable in a traditional public 

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forum. Id. at 181. But for present purposes, what matters is 

that the Court did “not denigrate the necessity . . . to maintain 

proper order and decorum within the Supreme Court 

grounds.” Id. at 182. Reinforcing the point, the Court later 

reiterated that it did “not discount the importance of this 

proffered purpose for” the statute. Id. at 183. The Court’s 

opinion therefore has been cited for the proposition that “it is 

proper to weigh the need to maintain the dignity and purpose 

of a public building.” Kokinda, 497 U.S. at 738 (Kennedy, J., 

concurring in judgment).

That need fully applies to the Supreme Court plaza. As 

the actual and figurative entryway to the Supreme Court 

building and ultimately the courtroom, the plaza is one of the 

integrated architectural “elements [that] does its part to 

encourage contemplation of the Court’s central purpose, the

administration of justice to all who seek it.” Statement 

Concerning the Supreme Court’s Front Entrance, 2009 J. 

Sup. Ct. U.S. at 831. And as the public’s staging ground to 

enter the Supreme Court building and engage with the 

business conducted within it, the plaza, together with the 

building to which it is integrally connected, is an area in 

which the government may legitimately attempt to maintain 

suitable decorum for a courthouse.

The government’s concern with preserving appropriate 

decorum and order in the Court’s plaza is not altogether 

unlike its interest in “promoting a tranquil environment” at 

the site of an open-air national monument or memorial, where 

visitors might “talk loudly, make noise, and take and pose for 

photographs,” but cannot engage in “conduct ris[ing] to the 

level of a conspicuous demonstration.” Oberwetter, 639 F.3d 

at 552 (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). We 

have described the interest in maintaining a tranquil 

environment in such places to be “substantial.” Id. at 554; see 

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Henderson v. Lujan, 964 F.2d 1179, 1184 (D.C. Cir. 1992). 

And that interest, as with the interest in maintaining suitable 

decorum in the area of a courthouse, is “no less significant for 

being subtle, intangible and nonquantifiable.” Henderson, 

964 F.2d at 1184. 

The second interest the government invokes here was 

also recognized in Grace. There, the Court described the 

interest in preserving the appearance of a judiciary immune to 

public pressure as follows:

Court decisions are made on the record before 

them and in accordance with the applicable 

law. The views of the parties and of others are 

to be presented by briefs and oral argument. 

Courts are not subject to lobbying, judges do 

not entertain visitors in their chambers for the 

purpose of urging that cases be resolved one 

way or another, and they do not and should not 

respond to parades, picketing or pressure 

groups.

Grace, 461 U.S. at 183. Because the Court viewed the 

perimeter sidewalks to be no “different from other public 

sidewalks in the city,” it “doubt[ed] that the public would 

draw a different inference from” picketing on the perimeter 

sidewalks than from picketing “on the sidewalks across the 

street.” Id. But the Court did “not discount the importance” 

of the interest in averting an “appear[ance] to the public that 

the Supreme Court is subject to outside influence or that

picketing or marching, singly or in groups, is an acceptable or 

proper way of appealing to or influencing the Supreme 

Court.” Id. 

The Supreme Court has credited the same interest both 

before and after Grace. When it upheld a ban on courthouseUSCA Case #13-5250 Document #1570216 Filed: 08/28/2015 Page 29 of 49
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area demonstrations aimed to influence the judicial process in 

Cox v. Louisiana, the Court recognized the state’s prerogative 

to “adopt safeguards necessary and appropriate to assure that 

the administration of justice at all stages is free from outside 

control and influence.” 379 U.S. at 562. And, while allowing

that “most judges will be influenced only by what they see 

and hear in court,” the Court affirmed that a state “may also 

properly protect the judicial process from being misjudged in 

the minds of the public.” Id. at 565. The Cox Court 

hypothesized a scenario in which “demonstrators paraded and 

picketed for weeks with signs asking that indictments be 

dismissed,” and then “a judge, completely uninfluenced by 

these demonstrations, dismissed the indictments.” Id. 

“[U]nder these circumstances,” the Court explained, a state 

“may protect against the possibility of a conclusion by the 

public . . . that the judge’s action was in part a product of 

intimidation and did not flow only from the fair and orderly 

working of the judicial process.” Id.

The decision in Cox came down fifty years ago. Since 

then, it may have become fashionable in certain quarters to 

assume that any reference to an apolitical judiciary “free from 

outside control and influence,” id. at 562, should be met with 

a roll of one’s eyes, or perhaps to view any suggestion to that 

effect as antiquated or quaintly idealistic. If so, the 

government’s interest in preserving (or restoring) the public’s 

impression of a judiciary immune to outside pressure would 

have only gained in salience. In fact, in its just-completed 

Term, the Supreme Court forcefully reaffirmed the vitality of 

the interest in preserving public confidence in the integrity of 

the judicial process.

In Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar, the Court considered a 

First Amendment challenge to a Florida ban on judicial 

candidates’ personal solicitation of campaign contributions. 

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Calling “public perception of judicial integrity” a 

governmental interest of “the highest order,” 135 S. Ct. at 

1666, the Court upheld the Florida ban as narrowly tailored to 

meet that compelling interest, id. at 1672. The Court 

explained that “[t]he importance of public confidence in the 

integrity of judges stems from the place of the judiciary in the 

government”:

Unlike the executive or the legislature, the 

judiciary “has no influence over either the 

sword or the purse; . . . neither force nor will 

but merely judgment.” The Federalist No. 78, 

p. 465 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton) 

(capitalization altered). The judiciary’s 

authority therefore depends in large measure 

on the public’s willingness to respect and 

follow its decisions. As Justice Frankfurter 

once put it for the Court, “justice must satisfy 

the appearance of justice.” Offutt v. United 

States, 348 U.S. 11, 14 (1954).

Williams-Yulee, 135 S. Ct. at 1666. 

The Williams-Yulee Court acknowledged that “[t]he 

concept of public confidence in judicial integrity does not 

easily reduce to precise definition, nor does it lend itself to 

proof by documentary record.” Id. at 1667. Despite the 

interest’s “intangible” character, id. at 1671, “no one” could 

deny “that it is genuine and compelling,” id. at 1667. The 

government therefore is on strong footing in invoking that 

interest here.

2.

Unlike in a public forum, there is no requirement in a 

nonpublic forum “that the restriction be narrowly tailored” to 

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advance the government’s interests. Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 

809. Rather, the government’s “decision to restrict access to a 

nonpublic forum need only be reasonable,” and even then, “it 

need not be the most reasonable or the only reasonable 

limitation.” Id. at 808. Judged by those standards, § 6135, as 

applied to the Supreme Court plaza, reasonably serves the 

government’s interests in maintaining order and decorum at

the Supreme Court and in avoiding the impression that 

popular opinion and public pressure affect the Court’s 

deliberations.

a.

To begin with, restricting expressive assemblages and 

displays promotes a setting of decorum and order at the 

Supreme Court. Congress could reasonably conclude that 

demonstrations and parades in the plaza, or the display of 

signs and banners, would compromise the sense of dignity 

and decorum befitting the entryway to the nation’s highest 

court. A nonpublic forum like the plaza “by definition is not 

dedicated to general debate or the free exchange of ideas.” Id.

at 811. Instead, “when government property is not dedicated 

to open communication the government may—without further 

justification—restrict use to those who participate in the 

forum’s official business.” Perry, 460 U.S. at 53. Here, the 

Supreme Court plaza serves as the integrated staging area 

through which to approach the Supreme Court building and 

encounter the important work conducted within it. Rather 

than “restrict use” of the plaza “to those who participate in the 

[Court’s] official business,” id., the government grants access 

to all comers. In doing so, the government does not lose its 

ability to require visitors to comport themselves in a manner 

befitting the site’s basic function.

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The statute also promotes the understanding that the 

Court resolves the matters before it without regard to political 

pressure or public opinion. Allowing demonstrations directed 

at the Court, on the Court’s own front terrace, would tend to 

yield the opposite impression: that of a Court engaged with—

and potentially vulnerable to—outside entreaties by the 

public. At the least, the appearance of a Court subject to 

political pressure might gain increasing hold.

This case illustrates the point. Hodge tells us he wants to 

use the plaza to send a “political message . . . directed . . . at

the Supreme Court” explaining how its decisions “have 

allowed police misconduct and discrimination against racial 

minorities to continue.” Am. Compl. ¶ 29 (J.A. 12). 

Congress may act to prevent just those sorts of conspicuous 

efforts on the courthouse grounds to pressure the Court to 

change its decision-making—efforts that could well foster an 

impression of a Court subject to outside influence. Reserving 

the plaza as a demonstration-free zone counters the sense that 

it is appropriate to appeal to the Court through means other 

than “briefs and oral argument.” Grace, 461 U.S. at 183. It 

thereby protects the judicial process, and the Supreme Court’s 

unique role within that process, “from being misjudged in the 

minds of the public.” Cox, 379 U.S. at 565.

Insofar as the prohibitions of the Assemblages and 

Display Clauses may reach beyond what is strictly necessary 

to vindicate those interests, Congress is allowed a degree of 

latitude in a nonpublic forum. The Supreme Court’s 

admonition that a restriction “need not be the most reasonable 

or the only reasonable limitation” captures that understanding. 

Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 808. Considered in that light, Hodge 

reaches too far in arguing that § 6135 is unnecessary because 

another statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1507, already addresses the 

government’s concerns. Especially when operating under the 

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relaxed standards applicable in a nonpublic forum, there is 

nothing “improper in Congress’ providing alternative 

statutory avenues of prosecution to assure the effective 

protection of one and the same interest.” United States v. 

O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 380 (1968); see Initiative & 

Referendum, 685 F.3d at 1073.

Section 1507, at any rate, does not fully address 

Congress’s concerns. That statute bars enumerated expressive 

activities near a courthouse “with the intent of interfering 

with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or 

with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or 

court officer.” 18 U.S.C. § 1507. It therefore contains a 

specific-intent requirement not present in § 6135. The latter, 

unlike the former, accounts for protesters in the Supreme 

Court plaza who may create the appearance of attempting to 

influence the Court’s deliberations while lacking any 

subjective intent to do so. 

There is also a difference between the two statutes with 

regard to the interest in maintaining decorum and order within

the Supreme Court grounds. Section 1507 is principally 

addressed to protests directed at judicial business. But people 

may—and do—wish to use the Supreme Court’s front porch 

as a platform for attracting attention to a wide range of causes, 

some of which might have no evident connection to the 

Supreme Court or the administration of justice. And 

Congress is generally concerned with any demonstration, 

regardless of subject, tending to compromise the decorum and 

order it seeks to maintain in the Court’s grounds. Because the 

Grace Court interpreted § 6135 to reach “almost any sign or 

leaflet carrying a communication”—including leaflets about

“the oppressed peoples of Central America,” 461 U.S. at 173, 

176—the statute addresses Congress’s concerns to an extent 

that § 1507 likely cannot.

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b.

Hodge, echoing the district court, argues not only that the 

Assemblages and Display Clauses are unreasonably narrow in 

failing to do work not already done by § 1507, but also that 

the clauses are unreasonably broad in prohibiting various 

conduct in the Supreme Court plaza that should remain 

permissible. The prohibitions’ terms, the latter argument 

runs, carry the capacity to sweep in a range of expressive 

activity bearing an inadequate connection to the government’s 

interests. For instance, a solitary, peaceful protester 

unassumingly holding an inconspicuous sign in the corner of 

the plaza, perhaps on a day when the Court conducts no 

business, might seem an unlikely candidate to raise 

substantial concerns about breaching appropriate decorum in 

the Supreme Court grounds or engendering a misperception 

regarding the Court’s receptiveness to outside influences.

It is often possible, however, to formulate hypothetical 

applications of a challenged statute that may call into question 

the law’s efficacy in those discrete instances. But “the 

validity of [a] regulation depends on the relation it bears to 

the overall problem the government seeks to correct, not on 

the extent to which it furthers the government’s interests in an 

individual case.” Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 

781, 801 (1989). It bears reemphasis in this regard that 

restrictions of expressive activity in a nonpublic forum need 

not satisfy any least-restrictive-means threshold, and “a 

finding of strict incompatibility between the nature of the 

speech . . . and the functioning of the nonpublic forum is not 

mandated.” Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 808-09. Rather, Congress 

may prophylactically frame prohibitions at a level of 

generality as long as the lines it draws are reasonable, even if 

particular applications within those lines would implicate the 

government’s interests to a greater extent than others.

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The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Williams-Yulee 

affords an illuminating reference point on that score. The 

petitioner, a former candidate for state judicial office, 

acknowledged that Florida’s interest in preserving the 

appearance of judicial integrity might justify a ban on

individualized, in-person solicitations for campaign 

contributions. Williams-Yulee, 135 S. Ct. at 1670. She 

argued, though, that Floridians were unlikely to lose 

confidence in their judiciary as a result of “a letter posted 

online and distributed via mass mailing” to “a broad 

audience.” Id. at 1671. The Supreme Court was 

unpersuaded. Although Florida’s interest “may be implicated 

to varying degrees in particular contexts,” the Court reasoned, 

the state had “reasonably determined that personal appeals for 

money by a judicial candidate inherently create an 

appearance . . . that may cause the public to lose confidence in 

the integrity of the judiciary.” Id. “The First Amendment 

requires” that the law “be narrowly tailored,” the Court 

explained, “not that it be perfectly tailored.” Id. (internal 

quotation marks omitted).

If that understanding won the day even when applying 

“strict scrutiny,” id. at 1666, it carries even more force when 

(as in this case) the First Amendment does not call for narrow 

tailoring. Here, as in Williams-Yulee, certain kinds of 

expressive conduct barred by the Assemblages and Display 

Clauses “of course . . . raise greater concerns than others.” Id.

at 1671. “But most problems arise in greater and lesser 

gradations, and the First Amendment does not confine [the 

government] to addressing evils in their most acute form.” Id. 

Congress therefore was under no obligation to fashion 

§ 6135’s reach so as to encompass only those forms of 

expressive activity in the Supreme Court plaza that most 

acutely implicate the government’s concerns. Congress could 

paint with a broader brush.

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The Williams-Yulee Court went on to observe, moreover, 

that the “impossibility of perfect tailoring is especially 

apparent when the State’s compelling interest is as intangible 

as public confidence in the integrity of the judiciary.” Id. 

That same “intangible” interest is at work here. And the 

alternative interest in maintaining decorum and order likewise 

forms a “subtle, intangible and nonquantifiable” baseline 

against which to apply any rigorous tailoring inquiry. 

Henderson, 964 F.2d at 1184.

Williams-Yulee highlights the limited utility of attempting

to address every conceivable application of § 6135 at the 

margins. When the heartland of a law’s applications furthers

the government’s interests, the existence of hypothetical 

applications bearing a lesser connection to those interests does 

not invalidate the law. “The delicate power of pronouncing 

an Act of Congress unconstitutional is not to be exercised 

with reference to hypothetical cases thus imagined.” United 

States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 22 (1960), quoted in Wash. 

State Grange, 552 U.S. at 450. While we are therefore 

cognizant of the need to keep our judicial imagination in 

check, we think it warranted to give a measure of attention to 

the district court’s (and Hodge’s) concerns with certain

hypothetical applications of § 6135 in the Supreme Court 

plaza, and to explain why those concerns may be borne of an 

unduly expansive reading of the statute’s prohibitions.

We first consider the Assemblages Clause’s prohibition 

against “parad[ing], stand[ing], or mov[ing] in processions or 

assemblages.” 40 U.S.C. § 6135. The district court feared 

that the clause would criminalize any group of people 

standing together in the Supreme Court plaza. That might 

include attorneys, tourists, Court employees gathering for 

lunch, or even a “line of preschool students . . . on their first 

field trip to the Supreme Court.” Hodge, 949 F. Supp. 2d at 

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188. Hodge similarly protests that the clause “is so broad as 

to cover not only people congregating to engage in expressive 

activity,” but also people “congregating for any other reason.” 

Appellee Br. 6. But insofar as the clause covers congregating 

for reasons other than expressive activity, those applications 

to non-expressive conduct would raise no First Amendment 

concern in the first place. In any event, we do not understand

the Assemblages Clause to prohibit every instance in which a 

group of persons stands or moves together in the Supreme 

Court plaza (nor, for that matter, does the government, see 

Appellants Br. 35-37). 

Though the language addresses “standing” and “moving” 

in an “assemblage,” those terms should be understood in the 

context of the words that surround them. And the 

surrounding language bespeaks joint conduct that is 

expressive in nature and aimed to draw attention. The verb

“parade” and the noun “procession” connote actions that are 

purposefully expressive and designed to attract notice. See 

Oxford English Dictionary (online ed. 2015) (definition 1a of 

“parade”: “[t]o march in procession or with great display or 

ostentation; to walk up and down, promenade, etc., in a public 

place, esp. in order to be seen; to show off”); id. (definition 1a 

of “procession”: [t]he action of a body of people going or 

marching along in orderly succession in a formal or 

ceremonial way, esp. as part of a ceremony, festive occasion, 

or demonstration”).

In addition, the Assemblages Clause appears in the same 

textual sentence as the Display Clause, and the conduct 

addressed by one naturally informs the reading of the other. 

The Display Clause plainly involves expressive conduct, 

fortifying the understanding that its sister clause is 

analogously addressed to expressive assemblages. Moreover, 

the Display Clause’s modifying phrase “designed or adapted 

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to bring into public notice” reinforces the statutory focus on 

conduct meant to attract attention. The more expansive 

reading contemplated by Hodge, by contrast, would 

presumably bar a familiar occurrence in the Court’s regular 

course of business: the line of people assembled in the plaza 

to enter the Court for an oral argument session. There is no 

reason to construe a prohibition aimed to preserve the plaza 

for its intended purposes in a manner that would preclude use 

of the plaza for those very purposes.

We next consider the Display Clause’s bar against 

“display[ing] in the Building and grounds a flag, banner, or 

device designed or adapted to bring into public notice a party, 

organization, or movement.” 40 U.S.C. § 6135. Again, the 

Grace Court understood that “almost any sign or leaflet 

carrying a communication . . . would be ‘designed or adapted 

to bring into public notice [a] party, organization, or 

movement.’” 461 U.S. at 176. Signs or leaflets, as the Court 

suggested, by nature aim to exhibit or relay the bearer’s 

message to an audience—that is their essential purpose. The 

inquiry has the potential to become more complicated, 

however, with respect to certain types of “device[s].” The 

district court expressed concerns about (what it perceived to 

be) the government’s concession that the Display Clause 

prohibits “an individual or group [from] . . . wearing t-shirts 

displaying their school, church, or organization logo” in the 

Supreme Court plaza. Hodge, 949 F. Supp. 2d at 188-89. 

The government maintains that it never intended to make that 

concession. It now takes the position that the statute’s

reference to the “display” of a “device” generally would not 

apply to the passive bearing of written words or a logo on 

one’s clothing. See Appellants Reply Br. 11-13.

We agree. Because the statute speaks in terms of an 

affirmative act of “displaying” a “device,” and because the 

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other listed mediums of a “flag” or “banner” involve 

brandishing an object for the purpose of causing others to take 

note of it, we assume that the “display” of a “device,” within 

the meaning of § 6135, would ordinarily require something 

more than merely wearing apparel that happens to contain 

words or symbols. The statute, moreover, not only 

contemplates an act of display akin to brandishing an object, 

but also requires a display that is “designed or adapted to 

bring into public notice a party, organization, or movement.” 

40 U.S.C. § 6135 (emphasis added). The passive bearing of a 

logo or name on a t-shirt, without more, normally would not 

cause the public to pause and take notice in the manner 

presumably intended by § 6135. 

Rather, we assume that the Display Clause means to 

capture essentially the same type of behavior addressed by 

rules we have considered in the context of open-air national 

memorials—i.e., “conspicuous expressive act[s] with a 

propensity to draw onlookers.” Oberwetter, 639 F.3d at 550. 

We will not attempt to canvass the various forms of conduct 

involving clothing that may come within the compass of that 

description; those cases can await adjudication as they might 

arise. But a single person’s mere wearing of a t-shirt 

containing words or symbols on the plaza—if there are no 

attendant circumstances indicating her intention to draw 

onlookers—generally would not be enough to violate the 

statute.

c.

With respect to expressive activity that does fall within 

the statute’s prohibitions, it is a mark in favor of the statute’s 

reasonableness that the barred activity can be undertaken in 

an adjacent forum—the sidewalk running along First Street

Northeast. The Supreme Court’s “decisions have counted it 

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significant that other available avenues for the . . . exercise 

[of] First Amendment rights lessen the burden” of a 

restriction in a nonpublic forum. Christian Legal Soc’y, 561 

U.S. at 690; see Oberwetter, 639 F.3d at 554; Hotel Emps., 

311 F.3d at 556. The sidewalk area fronting the Supreme 

Court along First Street is over fifty feet deep. Dolan Decl. 

Attach. (J.A. 20). And demonstrations, protests, and other 

First Amendment activities “regularly occur” there, as is often 

seen in pictures. Id. ¶ 5 (J.A. 17). The public generally must 

pass through the sidewalk to enter the plaza, moreover, 

arming someone engaged in expressive activity on the 

perimeter with exposure to the vast majority of people who go 

onto the platform.

Hodge makes no argument that the sidewalk in front of 

the Court is a physically inadequate or less effective forum for 

communicating his message. Instead, Hodge contends that 

the sidewalk’s availability should count as a strike against the 

statue’s reasonableness. He reasons that the adverse effects of 

First Amendment activity in the plaza would also be felt from 

the same activity on the adjacent sidewalk, rendering the 

distinction between the two an unreasonable one. We are 

unpersuaded. 

Once again, the analysis in Williams-Yulee is highly 

instructive. There, the former judicial candidate sought to 

invalidate Florida’s bar against solicitations by candidates 

themselves on the ground that Florida’s allowing solicitations 

by a candidate’s campaign committee essentially raises the 

same dangers. Williams-Yulee, 135 S. Ct. at 1669. In 

rejecting that argument (and doing so under strict scrutiny), 

the Court explained: “However similar the two solicitations 

may be in substance, a State may conclude that they present 

markedly different appearances to the public.” Id. 

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Here, the government could similarly conclude that 

protests in the Supreme Court plaza and protests on the public 

sidewalk “present markedly different appearances to the 

public.” In Grace, the Court doubted whether the public 

would view protest activity on the Court’s perimeter 

sidewalks to be more suggestive of the Court’s vulnerability

to public opinion than if the same activity were conducted on 

the public sidewalks across the street. 461 U.S. at 183. But 

that was because there was “nothing to indicate to the public” 

that the Court’s perimeter sidewalks “are part of the Supreme 

Court grounds or are in any way different from other public 

sidewalks.” Id. The opposite is true of the raised marble 

plaza, as we have explained. For that reason, Congress could 

conclude that the public might form a different impression 

about the Court’s susceptibility to public opinion if it saw a 

Court seemingly inviting demonstrators onto its own front 

porch (as opposed to a Court tolerating demonstrators on a 

public sidewalk “indistinguishable from any other sidewalks 

in Washington, D.C.,” id. at 179).

* * *

In the end, unless demonstrations are to be freely allowed 

inside the Supreme Court building itself, a line must be drawn 

somewhere along the route from the street to the Court’s front 

entrance. But where? At the front doors themselves? At the 

edge of the portico? At the bottom of the stairs ascending 

from the plaza to the portico? Or perhaps somewhere in the 

middle of the plaza? Among the options, it is fully reasonable 

for that line to be fixed at the point one leaves the concrete 

public sidewalk and enters the marble steps to the Court’s 

plaza, where the “physical and symbolic pathway to [the] 

chamber begins.” Scott & Lee, supra, at 138.

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Of course, this case would be decidedly different if the

line—wherever exactly it lay—were geared to shield the 

Supreme Court from having to face criticism just outside its 

own front door. A law that discriminated on the basis of 

viewpoint in that way would plainly infringe the First 

Amendment even in a nonpublic forum. Section 6135, 

however, bans demonstrations and displays in the plaza 

regardless of whether they support or oppose (or even 

concern) the Court. 

The statute requires that result because all demonstrations 

on the Court’s front porch—even those seeking to give the 

Court a pat on the back, not a slap in the face—could fuel the 

impression of a Court responsive to public opinion or outside 

influence, and could compromise the decorum and order 

suitable in the entryway to a courthouse, the nation’s 

highest. But demonstrations can take place on the adjacent 

public sidewalk, where the concerns justifying the statute’s 

restrictions of speech are not as much in evidence. For all 

those reasons, § 6135 is a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral—and 

thus permissible—means of vindicating the government’s 

important interests in the Supreme Court plaza.

IV.

In addition to his claim that § 6135 amounts to an 

unreasonable restriction on First Amendment activity on 

public property, Hodge also asserts a First Amendment 

overbreadth claim as a separate basis for across-the-board 

invalidation of the statute as to the plaza. The overbreadth 

doctrine, traditionally understood, amounts to an exception to 

the general rule against third-party standing. See Virginia v. 

Hicks, 539 U.S. 113, 118-19 (2003); Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 

413 U.S. 601, 611-12 (1973). Because overbroad laws have a 

chilling effect, potential speakers who could assert successful

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challenges to the law’s application against them might instead 

refrain from speaking at all. Recognizing that possibility, the 

overbreadth doctrine enables a person whose activity validly 

falls within the challenged law’s scope to make a First 

Amendment argument on behalf of those who might engage 

in protected speech but for the law’s chilling effect. See

Hicks, 539 U.S. at 119.

This, however, is not such a case. Hodge never argues 

that § 6135 may be constitutionally applied to his own 

conduct but is unconstitutional in its application to the 

protected speech of others. Instead, he contends that § 6135 

cannot be applied to anyone (including himself) in the 

Supreme Court plaza, because the law curtails too much 

speech in light of the government’s underlying interests. 

Descriptively, that is indeed an argument that the law is 

“overly broad.” But we have already addressed the substance 

of that argument in evaluating the reasonableness of § 6135’s 

restrictions on speech in light of the purposes of the forum. 

Having concluded that the government’s means-ends fit is 

reasonable, we see no viable avenue for concluding 

nonetheless that § 6135 has too many unconstitutional 

applications to survive. 

We therefore decline to run what would amount to the 

same analysis a second time. Our approach breaks no new 

ground. In Bryant v. Gates, 532 F.3d 888 (D.C. Cir. 2008), 

the plaintiff brought an overbreadth claim alongside a 

challenge to a speech restriction in a government forum. Id.

at 894 & n.**. In that case, as here, we upheld the challenged 

regulation as a reasonable measure in a nonpublic forum. Id. 

at 894-98. We noted that the plaintiff “separately claim[ed]” 

that the regulation was “unconstitutionally overbroad.” Id. at 

894 n.**. But we declined to “address that claim separately”

because it was “analytically identical to [the] claim” of an 

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invalid restriction of speech in a government forum. Id. We 

face the same situation here, and we follow the same course.

V.

Hodge advances an additional claim seeking across-theboard invalidation of § 6135’s application to the Supreme 

Court plaza: statutory vagueness. The district court, having 

found the statute unconstitutional on other grounds, did not 

reach Hodge’s vagueness challenge. See Hodge, 949 F. Supp. 

2d at 197 n.37. Hodge nonetheless presses his vagueness 

claim on appeal as an alternative basis for affirming the 

district court’s judgment. While we generally refrain from 

considering an issue not passed upon below, the “matter of 

what questions may be taken up and resolved for the first time 

on appeal is one left primarily to the discretion of the courts 

of appeals.” Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U.S. 106, 120-21 (1976). 

Here, we find it appropriate to consider Hodge’s vagueness 

claim. Not only does he ask us to address the challenge, but it

raises pure questions of law. And the government joins issue 

with Hodge’s arguments on the merits rather than suggesting 

that we forbear from resolving the matter.

“Vagueness doctrine is an outgrowth not of the First 

Amendment, but of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth 

Amendment.” United States v. Williams, 553 U.S. 285, 304 

(2008). “A conviction fails to comport with due process if the 

statute under which it is obtained fails to provide a person of 

ordinary intelligence fair notice of what is prohibited, or is so 

standardless that it authorizes or encourages seriously 

discriminatory enforcement.” Id. Hodge puts forth various 

arguments urging that the terms of § 6135 suffer from one or 

both of those failings.

Significantly, however, Hodge makes no claim that the 

statute is vague with respect to its coverage of his own

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conduct—either his act of displaying a sign that led to his 

arrest or the additional expressive acts he intends to carry out

in the plaza in the future. His vagueness claim thus runs up 

against “the rule that ‘[a] plaintiff who engages in some 

conduct that is clearly proscribed cannot complain of the 

vagueness of the law as applied to the conduct of others.’” 

Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U.S. 1, 20 (2010) 

(quoting Vill. of Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman 

Estates, Inc., 455 U.S. 489, 495 (1982)). “That rule,” the 

Supreme Court has explained, “makes no exception for 

conduct in the form of speech.” Id. As a result, “even to the 

extent a heightened vagueness standard applies” to statutes

prohibiting speech, “a plaintiff whose speech is clearly 

proscribed cannot raise a successful vagueness claim under 

the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment for lack of 

notice.” Id. 

Here, the bulk of Hodge’s vagueness arguments fit in the 

“lack of notice” category (i.e., claims that the statute “fails to 

provide . . . fair notice of what is prohibited,” as opposed to 

claims that the statute “is so standardless that it authorizes or 

encourages seriously discriminatory enforcement,” Williams, 

553 U.S. at 304). The sole exception is Hodge’s argument 

that the Assemblages Clause reaches so broadly that it leaves 

too much “discretion to law enforcement to determine which 

assemblages and processions to allow and which to prohibit.” 

Appellee Br. 38. That argument, however, rests on the 

premise that the Assemblages Clause pertains to any 

circumstance in which multiple persons stand or participate in 

some sort of procession in the plaza, regardless of whether 

they are engaged in expressive activity. Because we have 

already rejected that premise, Part III.B.2.b, supra, Hodge’s

vagueness argument on this score necessarily fails. His 

remaining vagueness arguments as to the Assemblages 

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Clause, including those sounding in “fair notice,” rest on the 

same flawed premise.

With regard to the Display Clause, Hodge sees 

unconstitutional vagueness in the terms “flag, banner, or 

device,” as well as in the phrase “bring into public notice a 

party, organization, or movement.” 40 U.S.C. § 6135. Again, 

Hodge makes no argument that it is unclear whether his 

carrying of signs and distribution of leaflets are prohibited, 

nor whether his conveying a “political message” about police 

misconduct and racial discrimination would qualify. See Am. 

Compl. ¶ 29 (J.A. 12). Because his arguments instead rest on 

the lack of fair notice as to the conduct of others, they 

seemingly come within the rule generally barring the assertion 

of a Fifth Amendment vagueness claim by someone to whom 

the challenged statute unambiguously applies. See 

Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U.S. at 20. In United States 

v. Williams, however, the Supreme Court engaged with a fairnotice vagueness claim against a statute criminalizing speech

even though the claim was premised on the scope of the law’s 

applicability to hypothetical persons not before the Court 

rather than to the defendant himself. See 553 U.S. at 304-07. 

We have no need here to examine precisely when, and to what 

extent, there remains room to bring those sorts of vagueness 

claims. Regardless, Hodge’s challenges to the Display Clause 

fail on the merits.

The Display Clause’s language does not “fail[] to provide 

a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice of what is 

prohibited.” Id. at 304. The words “flag, banner, or device” 

do not call for “wholly subjective judgments”—unlike terms 

such as “annoying” or “indecent,” which yield 

“indeterminacy” of a kind occasioning invalidation on 

vagueness grounds. Id. at 306. Of course, there might be 

cases in which there is some ambiguity about the statute’s 

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applicability—whether the circumstances involve a “device,” 

for instance. But as we have explained, the reference to 

“device” takes meaning from the adjacent terms “flag” and 

“banner,” connoting brandishing of an object in a manner 

aimed to cause others to take note of it. Supra pp. 39-40. 

And in any event, “[c]lose cases can be imagined under 

virtually any statute,” and it is a “mistake” to “belie[ve] that 

the mere fact that close cases can be envisioned renders a 

statute vague.” Williams, 553 U.S. at 305-06.

The phrase “designed or adapted to bring into public 

notice a party, organization, or movement” also lies well 

outside the territory of “wholly subjective judgments.” 

Hodge contends that the statute is ambiguous as to whether it 

covers displays communicating “any expression of views, 

regardless of whether the message is associated with an 

identifiable party, organization, or movement.” Appellee Br. 

43. But that alleged ambiguity, even assuming it would raise 

Fifth Amendment vagueness concerns, was resolved in 

Grace. The Supreme Court held that “almost any sign or 

leaflet carrying a communication”—including Zywicki’s 

leaflets concerning judicial tenure and foreign human rights 

issues and Grace’s sign displaying the First Amendment’s 

text—would “be ‘designed or adapted to bring into public 

notice [a] party, organization, or movement.’” 461 U.S. at 

176. The Court thus rejected the position advanced by Justice 

Stevens that Grace’s conduct fell outside the Display Clause 

because a “typical passerby could not, merely by observing 

her sign, confidently link her with any specific party, 

organization, or ‘movement.’” Id. at 188 (Stevens, J., 

concurring in part and dissenting in part). Hodge evidently 

thinks that Justice Stevens had the better view, see Appellee 

Br. 43, but that is not a viable argument about the present 

indeterminacy of the phrase.

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We therefore find Hodge’s vagueness challenge to be 

without merit.

* * * * *

For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the judgment of the 

district court.

So ordered.

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