Opinion ID: 1988243
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Overbreadth under the Wisconsin Constitution

Text: ¶ 17. Crossroads is much less concerned with the Kenosha County ordinance under the federal constitution than it is with the ordinance under the Wisconsin Constitution, and Crossroads urges this court to assess the validity of the ordinance under the free speech clause of Article I, § 3 of the Wisconsin Constitution. [4] Necessarily, Crossroads argues that in the area of obscenity, the Wisconsin Constitution provides for greater protection of speech than does the First Amendment. ¶ 18. As noted above, we are bound by Miller under an examination of obscenity statutes purportedly affronting the protections of the federal constitution as applied to this state through the Fourteenth Amendment. However, Miller provides Wisconsin citizens with but the minimum constitutional protection that must be accorded under the federal constitution. That is, a state statute or county ordinance may not limit sexually explicit materials in a manner more restrictive than that allowed by Miller. See Miller, 413 U.S. at 23-25. ¶ 19. Here, Crossroads would have us find that Wisconsin citizens enjoy more expansive freedoms of speech under the state constitution than they do under the First Amendment and that under the state constitution the state may not limit speech to the extent authorized by Miller. ¶ 20. We have previously stated that this court will not be bound by the minimums which are imposed by the Supreme Court of the United States if it is the judgment of this court that the Constitution of Wisconsin and the laws of this state require that greater protection of citizens' liberties ought to be afforded. State v. Doe, 78 Wis. 2d 161, 172, 254 N.W.2d 210 (1977). And, in a few limited circumstances, we have found within our state constitution protections that exceeded those provided our citizens by comparable clauses under the federal constitution. See e.g., State v. Hansford, 219 Wis. 2d 226, 242, 580 N.W.2d 171 (1998) (12-member jury is constitutionally required under Wisconsin Constitution, although not under the federal constitution); Doe, 78 Wis. 2d at 171-72 (explaining that the state has on occasion accorded criminal defendants broader right to counsel than mandated by the United States Supreme Court under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution). ¶ 21. Despite the differences in their language, we have heretofore found no differences in the freedom of speech guarantees provided by the First Amendment and Article I, § 3. Wisconsin courts consistently have held that Article I, § 3 of the Wisconsin Constitution guarantees the same freedom of speech rights as the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. See Lawson v. Housing Authority, 270 Wis. 269, 274, 70 N.W.2d 605 (1955); Jacobs v. Major, 139 Wis. 2d 492, 407 N.W.2d 832 (1987); State v. Bagley, 164 Wis. 2d 255, 260 n.1, 474 N.W.2d 761 (Ct. App. 1991). ¶ 22. As for the issue before us here, this court has indeed considered the breadth of the protection afforded by Article I, § 3 in the context of obscenity and has concluded that no greater protection exists under the Wisconsin Constitution than under the First Amendment. See State v. Chobot, 12 Wis. 2d 110, 106 N.W.2d 289 (1960); see also State ex rel. Gall v. Wittig, 42 Wis. 2d 595, 605, 167 N.W.2d 577 (1969) (recognition that the sale of obscene matter is a recognized abuse of the right to speak freely on all subjects and is not protected by either the federal or state constitutions); Princess Cinema, 96 Wis. 2d at 655 (court considered the constitutionality of the predecessor to the current Wis. Stat. § 944.21 under backdrop of both the Wisconsin Constitution and the federal constitution making no distinction as to the protections they each accord). ¶ 23. In Chobot, this court expressly considered the constitutionality of the predecessor of the current Wis. Stat. § 944.21, acknowledging from the outset of that decision that both the federal and state constitutional provisions were implicated. Chobot, 12 Wis. 2d at 112. There, we explicitly stated that the constitutional provisions involved in determining the constitutionality of the obscenity statute at issue were Wisconsin Constitution, Article I, Sec. 3 and Amendments to the United States Constitution. [5] Id. ¶ 24. In upholding the constitutionality of the obscenity statute, we relied exclusively upon federal decisions, and in doing so, did not specifically address the language of either the federal or state constitutions. The unavoidable conclusion is that the decision, which relied exclusively upon federal case law to decide the constitutional issue, is that for the purposes of obscenity statutes, we have interpreted the two provisions in an identical manner. ¶ 25. Further, roughly a third of the state jurisdictions have been asked to interpret their state constitutional free speech clauses to protect obscenity. [6] Only the Oregon Supreme Court has held that its constitution protects obscenity. State v. Henry, 732 P.2d 9 (Or. 1987). However, the Henry opinion reads as a recital of and quarrel with the United States Supreme Court's obscenity opinions, basing its decision less on principled differences between the language of its constitution and the federal constitution than on what it believes to be a line of poorly-reasoned Supreme Court decisions. ¶ 26. We find that obscenity is and has been an abuse of the right to speak freely on all subjects under the state constitution. The court reserves the right to find that in other areas the Wisconsin constitution may provide Wisconsin citizens with greater protection than does the federal constitution.