Opinion ID: 195018
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Overbreadth Binding Precedential Effect of

Text: MSTA 9. Perhaps it might be argued although Maine has not done so that the Act is content-neutral because it seeks to prevent only the harmful secondary effects of solicitation, i.e., the implied coercion inherent in solicitation on behalf of law enforcement personnel, with the resulting loss of integrity. Restrictions based on the content of speech that seek to regulate only the secondary effects of the speech have, in certain situations, been deemed content-neutral because they serve purposes unrelated to the content of the expression. Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 791 (1989); see Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U.S. 41, 47 (1986), reh'g denied, 475 U.S. 1132 (1986). But even if this argument had not been waived, it is doubtful that these cases, involving very dissimilar facts and regulatory schemes, would apply here. Cf. R.A.V., 112 S. Ct. at 2549 (listeners' reactions to speech are not secondary effects). In any event, we need not enter into the thicket of the secondary effects doctrine, as we conclude, infra, that, to the extent not controlled by the Supreme Court's summary dismissal of the MSTA appeal, the Act survives the stringent scrutiny applicable to content-based regulation. -16- We move to Maine's argument that the summary dismissal of the appeal in MSTA by the Supreme Court of the United States is entitled to binding precedential effect on the issues of overbreadth and underinclusiveness.10 The Supreme Court's summary disposition of an appeal to it is an adjudication on the merits that must be followed by lower courts, subject, of course, to any later developments that alter or erode its authority. Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S. 332, 343-45 (1975). We need, therefore, to determine the reach and content of the Supreme Court's dismissal of the appeal in MSTA for want of a substantial federal question. See id. at 345 n.14.11 10. We find no merit in plaintiffs' contention that Auburn I, 756 F. Supp. 610, is stare decisis. This court is not bound by a district court opinion that was never appealed to, or affirmed in, this court. See 1B Moore's Federal Practice 0.402[2], p.I-23 (1993) (the doctrine of stare decisis makes a decision on a point of law in one case a binding precedent in future cases in the same court, and such courts as owe obedience to the decision.) (emphasis added). 11. Both courts and commentators have noted the difficulty of ascertaining the proper reach of a Supreme Court summary disposition. See Hicks, 422 U.S. at 345 n.14 ([a]scertaining the reach and content of summary actions may itself present issues of real substance); Fusari v. Steinberg, 419 U.S. 379, 391 (1975) (Burger, C.J., concurring) (Another common response to summary affirmances . . . is confusion as to what they actually do mean.), reh'g denied, 470 U.S. 955 (1975); Preston v. Seay, 684 F.2d 172, 173 (1st Cir. 1982) (It is of course often difficult to understand the proper reach of Supreme Court summary affirmances and dismissals for want of a substantial federal question); Note, The Precedential Effect of Summary Affirmances and Dismissals for Want of a Substantial Federal Question by the Supreme Court After Hicks v. Miranda and Mandel v. Bradley, 64 Va. L. Rev. 117, 130 (1978) (noting -17- In Mandel v. Bradley, 432 U.S. 173 (1977), the Supreme Court said that, [s]ummary affirmances and dismissals for want of a substantial federal question without doubt reject the specific challenges presented in the statement of jurisdiction and do leave undisturbed the judgment appealed from. They do prevent lower courts from coming to opposite conclusions on the precise issues presented and necessarily decided by those actions. Id. at 176; see Illinois State Bd. of Elections v. Socialist Workers Party, 440 U.S. 173, 183 (1979) (Questions which 'merely lurk in the record,' are not resolved, and no resolution of them may be inferred.) (quoting Webster v. Fall, 266 U.S. 507, 511 (1925)). The Supreme Court's summary disposition will not control later lower court cases involving significantly dissimilar facts. See Mandel, 432 U.S. at 177 (vacating lower court decision that summary affirmance was binding because facts in summary affirmance were very different from those before lower court). The Supreme Court further cautioned that summary dispositions should not be understood as breaking new ground but as applying principles established by prior decisions to the particular facts involved. Id. at 176. the difficulty inherent in any attempt to interpret a disposition without an opinion). -18- In ascertaining the reach and content of the Court's summary dismissal in MSTA, we may not rely solely upon the reasoning of the Maine Law Court. Id. (Because a summary affirmance is an affirmance of the judgment only, the rationale of the affirmance may not be gleaned solely from the opinion below.); accord Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 785 n.5 (1983); Fusari, 419 U.S. at 391-92 (Burger, C.J., concurring). Instead, we should examine the jurisdictional statement filed in the Supreme Court of the United States and any other relevant aid to construction in order to ascertain what issues were presented and necessarily decided by the Court's summary dismissal.12 Examining the MSTA jurisdictional statement, together with the accompanying papers filed with the Supreme Court and the opinions of the lower courts, we conclude that appellants in MSTA specifically presented the issue of facial overbreadth, including whether the Act was broader than justified by the underlying state interest, to the Supreme Court. We think the Court was obliged to have considered and 12. Besides contesting whether the current case presents the same issues that were involved in MSTA, plaintiffs contend that the facts in the instant case and MSTA are very different; that MSTA deviated from established constitutional principles and broke new ground; and that doctrinal developments have undercut the precedential value of MSTA. Like the district court in Auburn I, we find these three contentions lack merit. 756 F. Supp. at 614. Unlike the court in Auburn I, however, we also conclude that MSTA is entitled to binding precedential value on the issue of substantial overbreadth. -19- to have rejected this issue as a predicate to its dismissing of the appeal for want of a substantial federal question. The issue of so-called underinclusiveness, however, does not so clearly appear in the papers, and later changes in the Act further erode the present bearing of MSTA on that topic. Therefore, the dismissal in MSTA is binding upon us as to overbreadth, but is not binding as to underinclusiveness, nor binding as to certain as applied issues the plaintiffs have raised. We turn first to overbreadth. In the strict sense, overbreadth is a doctrine for facially invalidating a statute that is so broad that it 'may inhibit the constitutionally protected speech of third parties.' N.Y. State Club Ass'n v. New York, 487 U.S. 1, 11 (1988) (quoting Members of City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 798 (1984)); Regan v. Time, Inc., 468 U.S. 641, 651 n.7 (1984). There must be a realistic danger that the statute itself will significantly compromise recognized First Amendment protections of parties not before the Court. Id. (quoting Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. at 801). The overbreadth must not only be real, but substantial as well, judged in relation to the statute's plainly legitimate sweep. New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747, 770 (1982). Plaintiffs argue that the Act is overbroad in this classic sense. For example, without themselves necessarily -20- wishing to engage in such conduct, they note that solicitors may wish to put out unattended collection boxes to receive police donations. This, they say, would be noncoercive, since no one would know who donated or did not donate, yet the Act would prohibit it. Similarly, plaintiffs point out that hypothetical private citizens, unconnected with the police, are prevented by the Act from soliciting donations to law enforcement from friends for instance, from voluntarily soliciting funds to buy a new cruiser for a local department. This, too, is said to be an example of how the Act sweeps too broadly, prohibiting protected conduct by third parties.13 Classic overbreadth, however, was an argument specifically presented to the Supreme Court in the MSTA appeal and necessarily rejected by its dismissal of that appeal for want of a substantial federal question. 13. One can also hypothesize, for purposes of overbreadth analysis, other arguably unconstitutional applications of the Act. For example, the Act might be construed to prevent private citizens from asking for money to lobby for a bill that raises police salaries. However, because the Act's prohibition runs only against fundraising for the tangible benefit of law enforcement, the Maine courts might well reject any such interpretation. Speculative readings like this would seem best decided, if ever sought to be enforced, in an as-applied lawsuit, rather than hypothesized in advance for purposes of facial overbreadth analysis. In any case, as discussed infra, we consider the issue of facial overbreadth to be foreclosed by the Supreme Court's summary dismissal of the MSTA appeal. -21- When so dismissing, the Supreme Court had before it, both in M.S.T.A.'s jurisdictional statement and in its notice of appeal, appellants' explicit contention that the Act was overbroad. And, as noted supra, the Law Court's underlying opinion from which appeal was being taken had specifically discussed and rejected overbreadth as a ground for invalidating the Act. It is true that in first describing the questions presented on appeal, M.S.T.A.'s jurisdictional statement after setting out the terms of the Act defined the question only as whether or not the Act violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Later, however, under the heading of Stated Reasons for Plenary Consideration, the jurisdictional statement urged upon the Court the desirability of its being able to question counsel as to the overbreadth doctrine. In a footnote appended to that suggestion, M.S.T.A. stated, From the outset, appellant has asserted the overbreadth doctrine of NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415 (1963). In NAACP, the Court had stated, among other comments relevant to overbreadth, Furthermore, the instant decree may be invalid if it prohibits privileged exercises of First Amendment rights whether or not the record disclosed that the petitioner has engaged in privileged conduct. Id. at 432. -22- That overbreadth was specifically presented to, and rejected by, the Supreme Court is underscored by M.S.T.A.'s statement in its notice of appeal to the Supreme Court that appeal was taken from the portion of the Law Court's decision that the statute in question is not overbroad. We find, therefore, that in denying the MSTA appeal, the Supreme Court was expressly presented with, and must therefore have rejected, the argument that the Act was unconstitutional under the First Amendment because of overbreadth. We think the Court's rejection of overbreadth subsumed, besides the classic overbreadth described above, another common variety of facial overbreadth claim. The term overbreadth is used in First Amendment contexts not only to invalidate statutes that are so broad as to inhibit the constitutionally protected speech of third parties, supra, but to facially invalidate statutes that inhibit free speech and are unsupported by a sufficiently compelling state interest or are not tailored narrowly to such an interest. See Secretary of Maryland v. Joseph H. Munson Co., 467 U.S. 947, 965-66 n.13 (1984) (where the defect in the statute is that the means chosen to accomplish the state's objectives are too imprecise, so that in all its applications the statute creates an unnecessary risk of chilling free speech, the statute is properly subject to facial attack.); see also -23- N.Y. State Club Ass'n, 487 U.S. at 11; Schaumberg, 444 U.S. at 639, Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. at 797. Any present claim of facial invalidity based on a purported absence of compelling state interest in prohibiting public solicitation for the tangible benefit of law enforcement officers and agencies seems to us to be precluded by the Supreme Court's dismissal of M.S.T.A.'s appeal.14 Similarly, a facial invalidity claim based on an alleged lack of narrow tailoring is likewise precluded. We so conclude not alone from the Law Court's own ruling in MSTA, which expressly found both a compelling state interest and the requisite narrow tailoring, but from express language in the jurisdictional statement submitted by M.S.T.A. when appealing to the Supreme Court from the Law Court's ruling. In that statement, as already noted, the terms of the challenged Act were set forth and an appeal on First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds noted. M.S.T.A. then went on to complain that the Law Court had held that the Act in fact interferes with First Amendment freedoms, but that compelling state interests exist which permit the interference. M.S.T.A. characterized the Law Court's version of the compelling interest as the interest of the State in the image of its 14. As later sections of this opinion demonstrate, we do not regard the Court's denial of appeal in MSTA as barring our consideration of claims attacking the sufficiency of the State's compelling interest based on underinclusiveness (equal protection) grounds. -24- law enforcement officers and as an intangible harm allowed in the Law Court to deprive law enforcement associations, and others, of protected First Amendment rights. M.S.T.A. urged summary reversal because the Law Court, absent any evidence of actual or perceived coercion, apparently assumed the compelling state interest into existence based upon comments in the legislative history of the Act. M.S.T.A. urged the Supreme Court if unwilling to reverse the Law Court summarily to question counsel as to the broad sweep of the State's alleged compelling interest, together with the appellant's assertion of the 'overbreadth doctrine.' These statements were prefaced by mention of the trial court's finding that appellants had not engaged in any form of coercion or otherwise used their official position to solicit advertising, a comment supportive of other remarks that the Law Court had rested the State's compelling interest solely on a need to conserve the image of its law enforcement officers. We think the above statements necessarily alerted the Supreme Court to a claim of overbreadth based on the notion that the Act's burdens on speech went beyond any truly compelling state interest. The challenged language of the present Act is virtually identical in all material respects to the statute found to be constitutional in MSTA. The key difference -25- between the current version of the Act, Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 25, 3702-A, and the prior version of the Act, Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 25, 3702, is that the current version now provides that the prohibition on solicitation applies only when solicitation tangibly benefits any law enforcement officer, agency or association. This clarifies that police solicitation for charitable causes unrelated to law enforcement is not barred. Arguably, under the old statute such solicitation was barred because it intangibly benefited law enforcement by providing good will. Even assuming, however, that the addition of the word tangible to modify benefits in the present version worked a substantive change in the law, that change only narrowed the breadth of the Act's prohibition. Because 3702-A is even narrower than the former 3702, the Supreme Court's summary dismissal of MSTA, in which the Supreme Court necessarily rejected the overbreadth and compelling interest challenges described above, is binding precedent on whether 3702-A is overbroad in the senses just discussed. See Glen Theatre, Inc. v. Pearson, 802 F.2d 287, 290 (7th Cir. 1986) (if issue of overbreadth is raised in jurisdictional statement, Supreme Court's summary affirmance binds lower courts on that issue).