Opinion ID: 71212
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: facial validity of the injunction

Text: 25 McKusick argues that the injunction is unconstitutionally overbroad because: (1) the injunction attempts to bind the world at large, impermissibly regulating the expressive activities of persons over whom the court lacks jurisdiction; and (2) the injunction authorizes the police to arrest persons based on less than probable cause. The City argues that McKusick has misread the injunction, and that the injunction does not attempt to bind the world at large or authorize any arrest based on less than probable cause. We address each of these issues in turn. 26
27 McKusick argues that no court can issue an injunction that binds the world at large, and that a speech-based injunction that attempts to bind nonparties creates an unconstitutional restraint on speech. That may or may not be true. 5 However, it is irrelevant in this case, because the injunction at issue does not attempt to bind the world at large. McKusick's argument that it does is based primarily on the following language: 28 ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that any City of Melbourne police officer or other person authorized to serve process may serve a copy of this order on any individual who may not have otherwise received notice of the order. Such officer may read the operative prohibitory language of this order to any individual who is without notice of this order, and such service or oral notice shall subject the person so served or noticed to the sanctions provided for herein for failure to comply herewith. 29 McKusick argues that Judge McGregor's transcursion of judicial authority was at once complete when he extended the scope of the injunction to 'any individual.'  The City responds that McKusick errs in attempting to isolate the challenged provision from the rest of the injunction because fundamental rules of construction ... require that a legal instrument be examined in its entirety. The City argues that, although the injunction authorizes police officers to read the injunction's prohibitory language to any individual, that prohibitory language, by its own terms, only applies to named parties and those acting in concert with them. 30 In our view, McKusick's interpretation of the injunction is foreclosed by the Supreme Court's interpretation of this same injunction in Madsen. In that decision, the Supreme Court based its holding that the injunction is content-neutral on the fact that the injunction is targeted at a particular group--the named parties and those acting in concert with them--whose activities had become disruptive. In explaining its holding on content-neutrality, the Supreme Court stated: 31 We begin by addressing petitioners' contention that the state court's order, because it is an injunction that restricts only the speech of antiabortion protesters, is necessarily content or viewpoint based.... To accept petitioners' claim would be to classify virtually every injunction as content or viewpoint based. An injunction, by its very nature, applies only to a particular group (or individuals) and regulates the activities, and perhaps the speech, of that group. It does so, however, because of the group's past actions in the context of a specific dispute between real parties.... [T]he court hearing the action is charged with fashioning a remedy for a specific deprivation, not with the drafting of a statute addressed to the general public. 32 Madsen, 512 U.S. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2523 (emphasis added). That explanation makes it clear that the Supreme Court did not give the injunction the interpretation that McKusick now urges. If it had done so, the Court could not have reached the conclusion that the injunction is content-neutral. Stated somewhat differently, if the Supreme Court had interpreted the injunction as an order against the world to refrain from speech activities expressing a particular viewpoint--specifically, an antiabortion viewpoint--within the 36-foot buffer zone, it almost certainly would not have concluded that the injunction is content-neutral. 33 That the majority in Madsen viewed the injunction as being targeted at a narrowly defined group of persons, instead of at the world at large, is underscored by the separate concurring opinions of Justices Souter and Stevens. Justice Souter emphasized that the trial judge who issued the injunction made reasonably clear that the issue of who was acting 'in concert' with the named defendants was a matter to be taken up in individual cases, and not to be decided on the basis of protesters' viewpoints. Id. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2530 (Souter, J., concurring). Similarly, Justice Stevens stressed: 34 [While] legislation is imposed on an entire community, ... injunctions apply solely to an individual or a limited group of individuals.... Given this distinction, a statute prohibiting demonstrations within 36 feet of an abortion clinic would probably violate the First Amendment, but an injunction directed at a limited group of persons who have engaged in unlawful conduct in a similar zone might well be constitutional. 35 Id. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2531 (Stevens, J., concurring). 36 McKusick asks this Court to reinterpret the injunction, contrary to the way the Supreme Court has interpreted it, and then to declare the injunction, as reinterpreted, unconstitutional. Of course, we cannot do that. Because the injunction, as construed by the Supreme Court, does not bind the world at large, the injunction cannot be unconstitutional on grounds that it does. Questions about the constitutionality of an injunction against the world at large are academic insofar as this injunction is concerned. 37
38 McKusick argues that the injunction authorizes arrests without probable cause because it states that [l]aw enforcement authorities, pursuant to the protective provisions of the court's order, are authorized to arrest those persons who appear to be in willful and intentional disobedience of the injunction. McKusick reasons that this language authorizes arrest on less than a reasonable ground to believe that a person is a named party or acting in concert with a named party. The City argues that McKusick has again misinterpreted the injunction because the enforcement provision, like every other part of the injunction, is subject to the injunction's limiting language that applies its proscriptions only to named parties and those acting in concert with named parties. 39 As we have already held, the injunction applies only to named parties and those acting in concert with them. By its plain words, the injunction only authorizes arrest for those who appear to be in willful disobedience of it. It follows that the injunction only authorizes the arrest of named parties, or those acting in concert with them, who appear to be acting in willful disobedience of the injunction. McKusick seizes upon the word appear in the injunction's enforcement provision, and contends that appear is less than probable cause to believe. We do not know why it should be interpreted in such a fashion, even in the abstract. Moreover, the word appear is but one word in the phrase appear to be in willful and intentional disobedience of the injunction. In context, the enforcement provision authorizes arrest of persons who, because of their own objective manifestations and because of other factors that may be relevant to a particular factual scenario, reasonably appear to be--i.e., give the police probable cause to believe that they are--named parties to the injunction or acting in concert with named parties, and engaged in actions in violation of the injunction. True enough, the injunction does not use the words probable cause or attempt to describe what factors will suffice for a showing of probable cause. However, no principle of law requires that injunctions use magic words or provide hornbook expositions on probable cause. Nor does any principle of law mandate that we interpret an injunction in a way that would undermine its validity. McKusick's facial challenge to the injunction is without merit. We turn now to her as-applied challenge, and to her claim that she is entitled to federal injunctive relief on that basis. 40