Opinion ID: 539934
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Challenge to the Ordinance

Text: 6 In order to understand this case, it is essential to know that there is surprisingly little relationship between plaintiffs' claim for declaratory and injunctive relief and their claim for damages. Plaintiffs attack the ordinance purely as being unconstitutional on its face, for overbreadth and vagueness. They have laid no foundation for attacking it as applied. The provisions of the ordinance that they challenge played no part in the jury trial concerning their three abortive appearances before the City Council, and the jury was not instructed on the ordinance. 2 Indeed, the record indicates that the ordinance was adopted in January 1980, after the first meeting in dispute had occurred. 7 Plaintiffs are consequently compelled to show that the ordinance is void on its face, if they are to succeed. The ordinance provides, in pertinent part:2-1.1(b) Rules of Decorum. While any meeting of the City Council is in session, the following rules of order and decorum shall be observed: 8 3. Persons Addressing the Council ... Each person who addresses the Council shall not make personal, impertinent, slanderous or profane remarks to any member of the Council, staff or general public. Any person who makes such remarks, or who utters loud, threatening, personal or abusive language, or engages in any other disorderly conduct which disrupts, disturbs or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of any Council meeting shall, at the discretion of the presiding officer or a majority of the Council, be barred from further audience before the Council during that meeting.... 9 2-1.1(d) Enforcement of Decorum. The rules of decorum set forth above shall be enforced in the following manner: 10 1. Warning. The presiding officer shall request that a person who is breaching the rules of decorum be orderly and silent. If, after receiving a warning from the presiding officer, a person persists in disturbing the meeting, the presiding officer shall order him to leave the Council meeting. If such person does not remove himself, the presiding officer may order any law enforcement officer who is on duty at the meeting as sergeant-at-arms of the Council to remove that person from the Council chambers.... 11 3. Resisting Removal. Any person who resists removal by the sergeant-at-arms shall be charged with a violation of this Section. 12 4. Penalty. Any person who violates any provision of this Section shall, pursuant to Section 1.08.010 of the Code, be guilty of a misdemeanor. 13 Plaintiffs focus particularly on the proscription against personal, impertinent, slanderous or profane remarks. They argue that such imprecise and content-oriented terms render the ordinance fatally vague and overbroad, under well-recognized first amendment doctrine. See, e.g., Gooding v. Wilson, 405 U.S. 518, 92 S.Ct. 1103, 31 L.Ed.2d 408 (1972) (criminal statute punishing utterance to another of opprobrious words of abusive language is void for overbreadth); Lewis v. City of New Orleans, 415 U.S. 130, 94 S.Ct. 970, 39 L.Ed.2d 214 (1974). 14 The City, however, offers a construction of the ordinance that is far narrower than that of plaintiffs. The City asserts that, properly construed, the ordinance does not permit discipline, removal or punishment of a person who merely utters a personal, impertinent, slanderous or profane remark. That provision is qualified, the City states, by the next sentence of the ordinance, which authorizes removal of any person: 15 who makes such remarks, or who utters loud, threatening, personal or abusive language, or engages in any other disorderly conduct which disrupts, disturbs or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the Council meeting.... 16 Norwalk Mun.Code Sec. 2-1.1(b)(3) (emphasis added). Thus, the City asserts that removal can only be ordered when someone making a proscribed remark is acting in a way that actually disturbs or impedes the meeting. The same threshold is required, according to the City's reading of the ordinance, for warning and removal under section 2-1.1(d)(1) and for prosecution under section 2-1.1(d)(4). 17 The ordinance can certainly be read in other ways, but we conclude that it is readily susceptible to the City's interpretation. We therefore adopt the City's narrower construction. See Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474, 480-84, 108 S.Ct. 2495, 2500-01, 101 L.Ed.2d 420 (1988) (Court's narrow construction of ordinance supported by representations of town counsel as to town's interpretation). 18 Plaintiffs argue that, even as construed by the City, the ordinance is fatally overbroad. They point out that in Gooding v. Wilson, the statute struck down by the Court punished the use of  'opprobrious words or abusive language, tending to cause a breach of the peace.'  Gooding, 405 U.S. at 519, 92 S.Ct. at 1104 (quoting Ga.Code Ann. Sec. 26-6303) (emphasis added). In Gooding, however, it was clear that the state's interpretation of tending to cause a breach of the peace required no actual breach, but simply focused on the offensiveness of the words. Id. at 525-27, 92 S.Ct. at 1107-08; see also Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community, 393 U.S. 503, 508, 89 S.Ct. 733, 737, 21 L.Ed.2d 731 (1969) (no showing of actual disruption of school operations by wearing of black armband). 19 A more fundamental flaw in plaintiffs' position is that their first amendment arguments do not take account of the nature of the process that this ordinance is designed to govern. We are dealing not with words uttered on the street to anyone who chooses or chances to listen; we are dealing with meetings of the Norwalk City Council, and with speech that is addressed to that Council. Principles that apply to random discourse may not be transferred without adjustment to this more structured situation. 20 City Council meetings like Norwalk's, where the public is afforded the opportunity to address the Council, are the focus of highly important individual and governmental interests. Citizens have an enormous first amendment interest in directing speech about public issues to those who govern their city. It is doubtless partly for this reason that such meetings, once opened, have been regarded as public forums, albeit limited ones. See Madison School Dist. v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Comm'n, 429 U.S. 167, 175, 97 S.Ct. 421, 426, 50 L.Ed.2d 376 (1976); Hickory Fire Fighters Ass'n, Local 2653 v. City of Hickory, 656 F.2d 917, 922 (4th Cir.1981). 21 On the other hand, a City Council meeting is still just that, a governmental process with a governmental purpose. The Council has an agenda to be addressed and dealt with. Public forum or not, the usual first amendment antipathy to content-oriented control of speech cannot be imported into the Council chambers intact. 3 In the first place, in dealing with agenda items, the Council does not violate the first amendment when it restricts public speakers to the subject at hand. 4 Madison School Dist., 429 U.S. at 175 n. 8, 97 S.Ct. at 426 n. 8; see Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense & Educ. Fund, 473 U.S. 788, 802, 105 S.Ct. 3439, 3448, 87 L.Ed.2d 567 (1985) (public forum may be created by government designating place or channel of communication ... for the discussion of certain subjects). While a speaker may not be stopped from speaking because the moderator disagrees with the viewpoint he is expressing, see Perry Educ. Ass'n v. Perry Local Educators' Ass'n, 460 U.S. 37, 60-61, 103 S.Ct. 948, 963, 74 L.Ed.2d 794 (1983) (Brennan, J., dissenting), it certainly may stop him if his speech becomes irrelevant or repetitious. 5 22 Similarly, the nature of a Council meeting means that a speaker can become disruptive in ways that would not meet the test of actual breach of the peace, see Gooding, 405 U.S. at 526-27, 92 S.Ct. at 1108, or of fighting words likely to provoke immediate combat. See Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 572, 62 S.Ct. 766, 769, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942). A speaker may disrupt a Council meeting by speaking too long, by being unduly repetitious, or by extended discussion of irrelevancies. The meeting is disrupted because the Council is prevented from accomplishing its business in a reasonably efficient manner. Indeed, such conduct may interfere with the rights of other speakers. 23 Of course the point at which speech becomes unduly repetitious or largely irrelevant is not mathematically determinable. The role of a moderator involves a great deal of discretion. Undoubtedly, abuses can occur, as when a moderator rules speech out of order simply because he disagrees with it, or because it employs words he does not like. But no such abuses are written into Norwalk's ordinance, as the City and we interpret it. Speakers are subject to restriction only when their speech disrupts, disturbs or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the Council meeting. So limited, we cannot say that the ordinance on its face is substantially and fatally overbroad. 6 See Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 615, 93 S.Ct. 2908, 2917, 37 L.Ed.2d 830 (1973) (to invalidate statute on its face, overbreadth must not only be real, but substantial as well, judged in relation to the statute's plainly legitimate sweep.) 24 We therefore affirm the district court's denial of declaratory and injunctive relief.