Opinion ID: 679948
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Overinclusiveness and Vagueness

Text: 20 Operation Rescue contends the injunction sweeps too broadly, burdening protected as well as unprotected speech. Specifically, Operation Rescue argues that those parts of the injunction that prohibit appellants from inducing or encouraging others to blockade clinics are impermissibly overinclusive, 1 prevent[ing] appellants from engaging in any anti-abortion activity which could conceivably lead to sit-ins in front of abortion clinics and chill[ing] all such [anti-abortion] speech with the threat of heavy fines. Appellants' Brief at 23. Separately, Operation Rescue contends the injunction must fall on grounds of vagueness, because its broad proscriptions against inducing and encouraging blockades leave appellants without adequate notice as to precisely what speech or speech-related conduct will be deemed to violate the order. Appellants' Brief at 24-25. Since Operation Rescue's overinclusiveness and vagueness claims involve, at their core, virtually identical claims that imprecisely worded portions of the injunction unnecessarily burden appellants' protected speech, we shall consider them together. 21 In a recent case involving a Florida court's injunction to protect abortion clinics against unlawful blockades, the Supreme Court announced a new standard for reviewing content-neutral injunctions restricting speech, under which the court must determine whether the challenged provisions of the injunction burden no more speech than necessary to serve a significant government interest. Madsen v. Women's Health Center, Inc., --- U.S. ----, ----, 114 S.Ct. 2516, 2525, 129 L.Ed.2d 593 (1994). The Madsen Court noted that this standard is less stringent than strict scrutiny, but more stringent than the standard for reviewing content-neutral, generally-applicable statutes restricting the time, place, or manner of speech, which must be narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest. --- U.S. at ---- - ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2524-26. The Court explained that injunctions should be held to this stricter standard because they carry greater risks of censorship and discriminatory application than do general ordinances. Id. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2524. 22 In Madsen, applying the burden no more speech than necessary standard, the Supreme Court upheld provisions of an injunction creating a 36-foot demonstration-free buffer zone on public property around clinic entrances, id. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2526-27, and restricting the noise levels of anti-abortion demonstrations in the immediate vicinity of the clinics, id. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2528. But the Court rejected provisions extending the buffer zone to private property adjacent to the clinics, id. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2528, banning images observable on demonstration signs, id. at ---- - ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2528-29, prohibiting demonstrators from physically approaching clinic patients within 300 feet of the clinic, id. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2529, and creating a 300-foot buffer zone around the residences of clinic staff, id. at ---- - ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2529-30. These latter provisions, the Court said, burdened more speech than was necessary to serve the government's significant interests in protecting a woman's freedom to seek lawful medical or counseling services, ensuring the public safety and order, promoting the free flow of traffic on public streets and sidewalks, protecting ... property rights, and protecting the psychological ... [and] physical well-being of the patient held 'captive' by medical circumstance. Id. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2526. 23 As a threshold matter, we must first determine whether the injunction at issue here, like that in Madsen, is content neutral. We conclude that it is. In assaying whether a restriction on speech is content neutral, 24 [t]he principal inquiry ... is whether the government has adopted a regulation of speech because of disagreement with the message it conveys. The government's purpose is the controlling consideration.... Government regulation of expressive activity is content neutral so long as it is justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech. 25 Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 791, 109 S.Ct. 2746, 2754, 105 L.Ed.2d 661 (1989) (internal quotations and citations omitted). We thus look to the government's purpose as the threshold consideration. Madsen, --- U.S. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2523; see also Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, --- U.S. ----, ----, 114 S.Ct. 2445, 2461, 129 L.Ed.2d 497 (1994) ([E]ven a regulation neutral on its face may be content-based if its manifest purpose is to regulate speech because of the message it conveys.). The district court identified several purposes to be served by this injunction, including protecting appellees' property rights, J.A. 79, protecting the rights of ... [appellees' patients] to obtain medical and counselling services, id., protecting the free flow of traffic on streets and sidewalks, id., and prevent[ing] irreparable physical and emotional injury to plaintiffs' patients and members as a result of their inability to receive and render medical and counseling services. J.A. 91. All these justifications are neutral with respect to the content of appellants' speech, and do not even remotely suggest a hidden purpose to regulate speech because of a disagreement with appellants' message. As in Madsen, the fact that the injunction covered people with a particular viewpoint does not itself render the injunction content or viewpoint based. --- U.S. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2524. 26 Next we consider whether the injunction serves a significant governmental interest. We conclude that it does. Examining the purposes of the injunction articulated by the district court and discussed in the preceding paragraph, we find that the injunction serves a combination of significant governmental interests virtually identical to those in Madsen, which the Supreme Court found quite sufficient to justify an appropriately tailored injunction.... --- U.S. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2526. 27 We now proceed to consider whether the injunction here is appropriately tailored to serve these significant governmental interests. As the parties concede in their briefs and at oral argument, the first part of the injunction, which prohibits trespassing on, blockading, impeding or obstructing access to or egress from the clinics, is aimed at unlawful conduct and does not seriously implicate First Amendment concerns. Appellants have no general First Amendment right to trespass on private property, see Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551, 568, 92 S.Ct. 2219, 2228-29, 33 L.Ed.2d 131 (1972), or to physically block access to private property as a means of protest, see Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 536, 555, 85 S.Ct. 453, 464-65, 13 L.Ed.2d 471 (1965). But the second part of the injunction, prohibiting appellants from inducing, encouraging, directing, aiding, or abetting others to engage in the prohibited conduct, reaches appellants' speech and consequently raises more serious First Amendment concerns. 28 Even here, however, the provisions prohibiting directing, aiding, or abetting illegal trespasses or blockades appear unproblematic. Many criminal statutes prohibit directing, aiding, or abetting illegal acts, even though the directing, aiding, or abetting may be carried out through speech. For example, the general federal criminal aiding and abetting statute, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2(a), provides that Whoever ... aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures ... [the] commission [of an offense against the United States] is punishable as a principal. Indeed, aiding and abetting are terms of art in the criminal law, their meanings polished by decades of judicial gloss. See, e.g., United States v. Raper, 676 F.2d 841, 849 (D.C.Cir.1982) (outlining elements of aiding or abetting offenses). That aiding and abetting of an illegal act may be carried out through speech is no bar to its illegality. See, e.g., United States v. Barnett, 667 F.2d 835, 842 (9th Cir.1982) (The first amendment does not provide a defense to a criminal charge simply because the actor uses words to carry out his illegal purpose. Crimes, including that of aiding and abetting, frequently involve the use of speech....); United States v. Buttorff, 572 F.2d 619 (8th Cir.) (upholding conviction for aiding and abetting the filing of false income tax returns by giving specific instructions at a large public gathering), cert. denied, 437 U.S. 906, 98 S.Ct. 3095, 57 L.Ed.2d 1136 (1978). [I]t has never been deemed an abridgement of freedom of speech or press to make a course of conduct illegal merely because the conduct was in part initiated, evidenced, or carried out by means of language, either spoken, written, or printed. Giboney v. Empire Storage & Ice Co., 336 U.S. 490, 502, 69 S.Ct. 684, 691, 93 L.Ed. 834 (1949). 29 Although directing may not enjoy a similar exalted status in the language of our jurisprudence, it suffers from neither overinclusiveness nor vagueness. Indeed, one who intentionally and successfully directs another to commit an unlawful act also may aid or abet the commission of the act. Cf. Raper, 676 F.2d at 849 (What is required on the part of the aider is sufficient knowledge and participation to indicate that he knowingly and willfully participated in the offense in a manner that indicated he intended to make it succeed.). In addition, the federal aiding and abetting statute imposes criminal liability for the command[ ] of illegal acts, a prohibition that appears to cover directing. Finally, note that 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2(b) also appears to prohibit directing of criminal acts: Whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly done by him or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal. Thus, directing another to commit an unlawful act is probably proscribed under the rubric of willfully caus[ing] the act to be done and subjects the director to criminal liability under the federal statute. In any event, we believe the injunction's prohibition on directing others to commit unlawful trespasses or blockades is sufficiently precise and narrow in scope to withstand challenge on overinclusiveness or vagueness grounds. 30 Operation Rescue's central quarrel with the injunctions is not with the directing, aiding, or abetting language, however, but with language prohibiting appellants from inducing and encouraging others to engage in trespassing or blockading clinics. Appellants' Brief at 19-23. In their view, these provisions are broad enough to encompass ordinary fundraising and organizing activities, if those activities facilitate anti-abortion demonstrations that ultimately include illegal sit-ins by overzealous demonstrators. Operation Rescue analogizes this case to NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. 886, 926-29, 102 S.Ct. 3409, 3432-34, 73 L.Ed.2d 1215 (1982), where the Supreme Court held on First Amendment grounds that civil rights leaders who organized and publicly advocated a legal boycott of white-owned businesses could not be subject to civil liability for illegal acts which the boycott leaders had not specifically incited, authorized or directed. Moreover, Operation Rescue argues, the inducing and encouraging language in the present injunction could proscribe mere abstract advocacy of illegal sit-ins, in violation of the principles enunciated in Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 447-48, 89 S.Ct. 1827, 1829-30, 23 L.Ed.2d 430 (1969) (abstract advocacy of unlawful activity may not be prohibited, but incitement to imminent unlawful action is not protected by First Amendment). 31 Taken in isolation, the terms inducing and encouraging may seem capable of such broad readings. Note, however, that like aiding and abetting, these terms come with their own impressive legal pedigree. Inducing, for example, also appears in the text of the federal aiding and abetting statute, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2(a) (Whoever ... aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces, or procures ... commission [of an unlawful act], is punishable as a principal.) (emphasis added). And some courts have said that with the requisite mental state, encouraging another who successfully completes an unlawful act constitutes abetting. See, e.g., United States v. Barnett, 667 F.2d at 841 (An abettor is one 'who, with mens rea, ... commands, counsels or otherwise encourages the perpetrator to commit the crime.' ) (quoting Perkins, Criminal Law 645 (2d ed. 1969)) (emphasis added). 32 More importantly, the meaning of these terms is constrained by the context in which they are actually used in the injunction. Cf. Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108-12, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 2298-2301, 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972) (upholding ordinance, as understood in context and against background of judicial construction, against vagueness challenge). The preliminary injunction prohibited appellants from inducing or encouraging others to trespass on or blockade six specifically identified clinics in the District of Columbia. 726 F.Supp. at 305. The permanent injunction prohibits appellants from trespassing on or blockading nine specifically identified clinics, and further prohibits inducing or encouraging others to trespass on [or] blockade ... any facility at which abortions, family planning, or gynecological services are performed in the District of Columbia. 747 F.Supp. at 771 (revised permanent injunction). As the district court itself stated after contempt citations had been issued, it is clear that 'inducing' and 'encouraging' the violations are defined in context of the Injunction and are understood by all the parties to mean direct incitement of these blockades. Memorandum Opinion, July 29, 1993, J.A. 174. 33 The district court said it intended the inducing and encouraging language in the injunction to prohibit inciting unlawful acts, and no more. Such a construction of the inducing and encouraging language as narrowly aimed at prohibiting appellants from inciting unlawful acts is certainly plausible, given the context of ongoing unlawful blockades. On this reading, the injunction would reach neither abstract advocacy of the kind implicated in Brandenburg, nor the organizing of lawful demonstrations which may ultimately include unauthorized unlawful acts, as in Claiborne Hardware. It is well settled that incitement to specific unlawful acts may be prohibited without running afoul of First Amendment guarantees. See Brandenburg, 395 U.S. at 447, 89 S.Ct. at 1829. 34 By relying upon the terms inducing and encouraging rather than inciting to mean inciting, the injunction introduces an easily avoidable measure of unclarity as to what speech and conduct is prohibited. Before the district court's clarification in its July, 1993 opinion, the words of the injunction might have been more broadly interpreted by appellants and others to whom they were applied. Had the district court instead chosen its words more precisely, and used the term inciting to prohibit inciting, the injunction would have accomplished all it sets out to accomplish, while making it plain to all that no protected speech is impermissibly burdened. Reviewing the injunction under the demanding standard set out in Madsen, whether the challenged provisions burden no more speech than necessary to achieve a significant government interest, Madsen, --- U.S. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2525, we conclude that the language of the injunction was vague enough to create an impermissible potential for overinclusiveness. 35 We do not find it necessary to vacate the district court's contempt orders on this ground, however. Where an overinclusiveness challenge is brought by a party who engages in both protected and unprotected speech, the court may save a statute if there is a severable provision that prohibits unprotected speech. Brockett v. Spokane Arcades, Inc., 472 U.S. 491, 503-04, 105 S.Ct. 2794, 2801-02, 86 L.Ed.2d 394 (1985). We see no reason why the same should not be true of injunctions, and, in this case, a suitable narrowing construction is readily at hand. The district court can simply strike the words inducing and encouraging and substitute the word inciting, and the injunction will no longer be overinclusive. 36 Amending the injunction in this manner also cures any due process problem. See Grayned, 408 U.S. at 108, 92 S.Ct. at 2298-99 (due process violated when the person of ordinary intelligence [lacks] a reasonable opportunity to know what was prohibited, the law thus trap[ping] the innocent by not providing fair warning). Since we are vacating most of the district court's second contempt order on other grounds, infra Part II.D., any subsequent contempt proceedings will be based either upon past conduct alleged to constitute inciting--which is clearly within the terms of which appellants had notice, inducing or encouraging--or upon future conduct alleged to violate a modified injunction that will explicitly prohibit inciting unlawful conduct. All of the surviving contempt sanctions are based upon violations of other court orders or of provisions of the injunction other than those challenged on overinclusiveness or vagueness grounds. 2 37 Therefore, we remand the injunction order to the district court, with instructions to modify the language of the injunction to conform precisely to the district court's expressed intention that the injunction prohibit appellants from inciting unlawful acts, and no more.