Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/95-1065.ZX.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 06:34:28+00:00

Document:
Instead of evaluating the injunction before us on the basis of the reasons for which it was issued, the Court today postulates other reasons that might have justified it and pronounces those never determined reasons adequate. This is contrary to the settled practice governing appellate review of injunctions, and indeed of all actions committed by law to the initial factfinding, predictive and policy judgment of an entity other than the appellate court, see, e.g., SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80 (1943). The Court's opinion also claims for the judiciary a prerogative I have never heard of: the power to render decrees that are in its view justified by concerns for public safety, though not justified by the need to remedy the grievance that is the subject of the lawsuit. I dissent.
The most important holding in today's opinion is tucked away in the seeming detail of the "cease and desist" discussion in the penultimate paragraph of analysis: There is no right to be free of unwelcome speech on the public streets while seeking entrance to or exit from abortion clinics. Ante, at 24-25. "As we said in Madsen [v. Women's Health Center, Inc., 512 U.S. 753 (1994)], quoting from Boos v. Barry, 485 U.S. 322, `[a]s a general matter, we have indicated that in public debate our own citizens must tolerate insulting, and even outrageous, speech in order to provide adequate breathing space to the freedoms protected by the First Amendment.' " Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). But the District Court in this case (like the Court of Appeals) believed that there was such a right to be free of unwanted speech, and the validity of the District Court's action here under review cannot be assessed without taking that belief into account. That erroneous view of what constituted remediable harm shaped the District Court's injunction, and it is impossible to reverse on this central point yet maintain that the District Court framed its injunction to burden "no more speech than necessary," Madsen v. Women's Health Center, Inc., 512 U.S. 753, 765 (1994), to protect legitimate governmental interests.
The Court asserts (in carefully selected words) that "the District Court was entitled to conclude that the only way to ensure access was to move back the demonstrations." Ante, at 21 (emphasis added). And again: "[T]he District Court was entitled to conclude on this record that the only feasible way to shield individuals within the fixed buffer zone from unprotected conduct . . . would have been to keep the entire area clear of defendant protesters." Ante, at 22, n. 11 (emphasis added). And (lest the guarded terminology be thought accidental), yet a third time: "Based on [the defendants'] conduct, the District Court was entitled to conclude . . . that the only way to ensure access was to move all protesters away from the doorways." Ante, at 22 (first emphasis added; second in original). But prior to the question of whether it was entitled to conclude that is the question whether it did conclude that. We are not in the business (or never used to be) of making up conclusions that the trial court could permissibly have reached on questions involving assessments of fact, credibility and future conduct--and then affirming on the basis of those posited conclusions, whether the trial court in fact arrived at them or not. [n.1] That is so even in ordinary cases, but it is doubly true when we review a trial court's order imposing a prior restraint upon speech. As we said in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. 886 (1982), when a court decides to impose a speech restrictive injunction, the conclusions it reaches must be "supported by findings that adequately disclose the[ir] evidentiary basis . . . , that carefully identify the impact of [the defendants'] unlawful conduct, and that recognize the importance of avoiding the imposition of punishment for constitutionally protected activity." Id., at 933-934.
I do not grasp the relevance of the Court's assertions that admitting the two counselors into the buffer zone was "an effort to enhance petitioners' speech rights," ante, at 25, "an effort to bend over backwards to `accommodate' defendants' speech rights," ante, at 22, n. 11, and that "the `cease and desist' limitation must be assessed in that light," ante, at 25. If our First Amendment jurisprudence has stood for anything, it is that courts have an obligation "to enhance speech rights," and a duty "to bend over backwards to `accommodate' speech rights." That principle was reaffirmed in Madsen, which requires that a judicial injunction against speech burden "no more speech than necessary to serve a significant government interest." Madsen, 512 U. S., at 765 (emphasis added). Thus, if the situation confronting the District Court permitted "accommodation" of petitioners' speech rights, it demanded it. The Court's effort to recharacterize this responsibility of special care imposed by the First Amendment as some sort of judicial gratuity is perhaps the most alarming concept in an opinion that contains much to be alarmed about.
The Court proceeds from there to make a much more significant point: An injunction on speech may be upheld even if not justified on the basis of the interests asserted by the plaintiff, as long as it serves "public safety." "[I]n assessing a First Amendment challenge, a court . . . inquires into the governmental interests that are protected by the injunction, which may include an interest in public safety and order. . . . Here, the District Court cited public safety as one of the interests justifying the injunction. . . . [T]he fact that `threat to public safety' is not listed anywhere in respondents' complaint as a claim does not preclude a court from relying on the significant governmental interest in public safety in assessing petitioners' First Amendment argument." Ante, at 16-17.
This is a wonderful expansion of judicial power. Rather than courts' being limited to according relief justified by the complaints brought before them, the Court today announces that a complaint gives them, in addition, ancillary power to decree what may be necessary to protect--not the plaintiff, but the public interest! Every private suit makes the district judge a sort of one man Committee of Public Safety. There is no precedent for this novel and dangerous proposition. In Madsen, the Court says, "it was permissible to move protesters off the sidewalk and to the other side of the street in part because other options would block the free flow of traffic on the streets and sidewalks." Ante, at 16; see also Madsen, 512 U. S., at 769. But acknowledging, as we did in Madsen, that some remedial options are eliminated because they conflict with considerations of public safety is entirely different from asserting, as the Court does today, that public safety can provide part of the justification for the remedy. [n.3] The only other case cited by the Court is Milk Wagon Drivers v. Meadow moor Dairies, Inc., 312 U.S. 287, 294-295 (1941). Ante, at 16. But Meadowmoor upheld an injunction against a union's intimidation of storekeepers, not because "the public interest" demanded it, but because the storekeepers were customers of the plaintiff dairy, which it was the purpose and effect of the intimidation to harm. 312 U. S., at 294-295.
1 The Court's lengthy citation of cases standing for the proposition that an appellate court can affirm on a mandatory legal ground different from that relied upon by the trial court, ante, at 25, n. 12, has no relevance to the question whether an appellate court can substitute its own assessments of past facts, of future probabilities, and hence of injunctive necessities, for the assessments made (and required to be made) by the trial court.
2 The Court contends that petitioners only raise the issue whether the §40-c cause of action is "valid," and not the issue whether the District Court erred in concluding that the claim was "likely to succeed." Ante, at 16. The concept of an invalid claim that is likely to succeed is an interesting one, but there is no doubt that petitioners did not entertain it: They plainly challenged "[t]he district court's ruling that respondents were likely to prevail on their state antidiscrimination claim." Brief for Petitioners 32; see also id., at 15.
4 The Court approves reliance on "public safety" not "as an element which supported respondents' claim for an injunction," but only "as a basis for rejecting petitioners' challenge to the injunction on First Amendment grounds." Ante, at 17, n. 7. Such a distinction makes no sense. In the context before us here, whether there is "a basis for rejecting petitioners' challenge to the injunction on First Amendment grounds" depends entirely on whether the "element[s] which suppor[t] the respondents' claim for an injunction" are strong enough. The issues are one and the same.

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