Opinion ID: 180209
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Mr. Doe's claim under the First Amendment

Text: We first consider Mr. Doe's contention that Utah's registration statute violates his First Amendment right to engage in anonymous speech. In McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, the Supreme Court held that an author's decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. 514 U.S. 334, 342, 115 S.Ct. 1511, 131 L.Ed.2d 426 (1995). As the Supreme Court explained, Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliationand their ideas from suppressionat the hand of an intolerant society. Id. at 357, 115 S.Ct. 1511 (citation omitted). The Supreme Court has also made clear that First Amendment protections for speech extend fully to communications made through the medium of the internet. See Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844, 870, 117 S.Ct. 2329, 138 L.Ed.2d 874 (1997) (explaining that the internet allows any person with a phone line [to] become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox and that our cases provide no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment scrutiny that should be applied to this medium). In spite of these protections, however, a state may permissibly infringe upon this right when its interest is important enough and the law is appropriately tailored to meet the stated interest. See Am. Constitutional Law Found., Inc. v. Meyer, 120 F.3d 1092, 1102 (10th Cir. 1997). In evaluating these interests, the Supreme Court has suggested a distinction between the mandatory disclosure in public of a speaker's identity and the requirement that a speaker provide information to the government that could later be used to trace speech back to its source. In Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, Inc., 525 U.S. 182, 119 S.Ct. 636, 142 L.Ed.2d 599 (1999), the Court distinguished between a provision that required petition circulators to wear name badges and a provision that required circulators to file with the state affidavits including their names and addresses. The Court held that the former provision unconstitutionally burdened speech because it compelled identification at the precise moment when the circulator's interest in anonymity is greatest. Id. at 199, 119 S.Ct. 636. In contrast, the affidavit requirement affected anonymity only after the conversations were complete, exemplif[ying] the type of regulation for which McIntyre left room. Id. at 200, 119 S.Ct. 636. According to Mr. Doe, we should view Utah's statute as a content-based restriction, subject to the strictest of scrutiny, because it has the effect of taking away [Mr.] Doe's right to choose whether to speak anonymously or under a pseudonym. (Appellant's Br. at 10.) We are not persuaded. The principal inquiry in determining content neutrality is whether the government has adopted a regulation of speech because of disagreement with the message it conveys. Am. Target Adver., Inc. v. Giani, 199 F.3d 1241, 1247 (10th Cir.2000) (internal quotation marks and ellipsis omitted). As a general rule, laws that by their terms distinguish favored speech from disfavored speech on the basis of ideas or views expressed are content based. By contrast, laws that confer benefits or impose burdens on speech without reference to the ideas or views expressed are in most instances content neutral. Turner Broad. Sys., Inc. v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 643, 114 S.Ct. 2445, 129 L.Ed.2d 497 (1994) (citation omitted). Thus, in Giani we viewed as content neutral a requirement that direct mail solicitors register with the state, reasoning that this requirement targeted the secondary effects of speechincreased fraud and misrepresentation and was not intended to suppress any particular point of view. 199 F.3d at 1247. As we stated in another case, simply because an otherwise content-neutral law has an incidental effect on some speakers or messages does not change its classification so long as it serves purposes unrelated to the content of expression. Golan v. Holder, 609 F.3d 1076, 1083 (10th Cir.2010). On its face, section 77-27-21.5 is a content-neutral regulation. The law says nothing about the ideas or opinions that Mr. Doe may or may not express, anonymously or otherwise. Neither is it aimed at supress[ing] the expression of unpopular views, Giani, 199 F.3d at 1247, but rather it is directed towards aiding the police in solving crimes. As in Giani, we therefore examine this law as a content-neutral regulation. As a content-neutral regulation, Utah's reporting law is subject to intermediate scrutiny, meaning that the law will be upheld if the Act (1) serves a substantial government interest and (2) is `narrowly drawn' to serve that interest `without unnecessarily interfering with First Amendment freedoms.' Id. (quoting Vill. of Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Env't, 444 U.S. 620, 637, 100 S.Ct. 826, 63 L.Ed.2d 73 (1980)). We have no doubt that the State of Utah has a compelling interest in investigating kidnapping and sex-related crimes. Thus, our consideration of this statute focuses on whether it unnecessarily interferes with Mr. Doe's First Amendment freedoms in serving this interest. In reviewing state statutes challenged on First Amendment grounds, we will uphold a law if it is readily susceptible to a narrowing construction that would make it constitutional. ACLU v. Johnson, 194 F.3d 1149, 1159 (10th Cir.1999). Nevertheless, [t]he key to application of this principle is that the statute must be readily susceptible to the limitation; we will not rewrite a state law to conform it to constitutional requirements. Id. Mr. Doe argues that the statute is unconstitutional because the required disclosure of internet identifiers to state officials, as well as the possibility of disclosure of those identifiers to the public, chills his speech. [5] Turning first to the possibility of disclosure to the public, Mr. Doe focuses on the language of section 77-27-21.5(2)(c), which allows the state to share information provided by an offender under this section that may not be made available to the public [on the sex-offender notification and registration website], but only: (i) for the purposes under this Subsection (2); or (ii) in accordance with Section 63G-2-206. (emphasis added). According to Mr. Doe, the or in this statute means that the government may choose to disclose information to the public, free from the privacy safeguards contained in section 63G-2-206, so long as it is to assist in investigating kidnapping and sex-related crimes. § 77-27-21.5(2). Thus, Mr. Doe argues, the statute allows for the possibility of forced public disclosure of what would otherwise be anonymous speech. However, although subsection (c)(i) may not contain the explicit privacy safeguards listed in section 63-G-2-206, we are not persuaded that this subsection permits the unrestricted disclosure of information to the general public. Section 21.5 discusses two classes of informationinformation that shall [be made] available to the public, and information that may not be made available to the public but may be shared for limited law-enforcement purposes or in accordance with section 63-G-2-206. The statutory language thus suggests a distinction between making information available to the public and sharing information. Throughout GRAMA and other privacy-related Utah statutes, share is used to indicate the limited transfer of information to specified recipients, with the confidentiality of this information otherwise remaining intact. See, e.g., Utah Code Ann. § 63G-2-206(4)(b) (providing for the sharing of records between other governmental entities for specified purposes, with the recipient required to abide by the statutory restrictions on access); id. § 26-1-17.5 (permitting sharing of confidential immunization records among certain entities for specified purposes); id. § 53-14-101 (authorizing law enforcement agencies to share employee applicant information with other law enforcement agencies, provided that the confidentiality of the information is otherwise maintained); see also id. § 63G-2-601(2)-(3) (requiring an information-collecting agency to disclose the specific classes of persons and governmental entities with whom information is shared). Nowhere in the Utah code is share used to indicate the unrestricted disclosure of information to the general public. In light of this broader statutory context, as well as the limited law-enforcement purposes for which internet identifiers may be shared under this section, we conclude that section 77-27-21.5(2)(c)(i) is readily susceptible of a much narrower construction than advanced by Mr. Doe. We thus read this statute as permitting sharing only among law-enforcement agencies, not the public at large, and only for the recited law-enforcement purposes. As for Mr. Doe's arguments concerning the potential chilling effect of disclosure to state officials, we also hold that the statute includes sufficient restrictions so as not to unnecessarily chill Mr. Doe's speech. Mr. Doe argues that the language of section 77-27-21.5(2) is broad enough to allow the state to monitor his communications at any time, which in turn may chill any anonymous criticisms of oppressive laws or state practices he might otherwise make via the internet. However, while this section, which allows the State to use an offender's internet identifiers to assist in investigating kidnapping and sex-related crimes, and in apprehending offenders, § 77-27-21.5(2), can be read broadly, we conclude that it is also readily susceptible to a narrowing construction. Accordingly, we read this language, as did the district court, as only allowing state actors to look beyond the anonymity surrounding a username in the course of an investigation after a new crime has been committed. Although this narrow interpretation may still result in the disclosure of Mr. Doe's online identifiers to state officials, such identification will not unnecessarily interfere with his First Amendment freedom to speak anonymously. First, we note that such a disclosure would generally occur, if at all, at some time period following Mr. Doe's speech and not at the moment he wished to be heard. As the Fourth Circuit has explained, Speech is chilled when an individual whose speech relies on anonymity is forced to reveal his identity as a pre-condition to expression. In other words, the First Amendment protects anonymity where it serves as a catalyst for speech. Peterson v. Nat'l Telecomm. & Info. Admin., 478 F.3d 626, 632 (4th Cir.2007) (citation omitted); see also Buckley, 525 U.S. at 199-200, 119 S.Ct. 636 (holding that a law requiring petition circulators to attach an affidavit with personal information to completed petitions was constitutional but invalidating a requirement that the circulators wear name badges at the time they gathered petition signatures because it compelled ... identification at the precise moment when the circulator's interest in anonymity [was] greatest). Although there is a possibility that a government agent would have access to Mr. Doe's identity at the time he was speakingas, for example, if an undercover sought him out in a chat room in the course of investigating a sex crime we are not persuaded that this possibility imposes a constitutionally improper burden on speech. As the Supreme Court noted in Laird v. Tatum : [T]his Court has found in a number of cases that constitutional violations may arise from the deterrent, or `chilling,' effect of governmental regulations that fall short of a direct prohibition against the exercise of First Amendment rights. In none of these cases, however, did the chilling effect arise merely from the individual's knowledge that a governmental agency was engaged in certain [information-gathering] activities or from the individual's concomitant fear that, armed with the fruits of those activities, the agency might in the future take some other and additional action detrimental to that individual. 408 U.S. 1, 11, 92 S.Ct. 2318, 33 L.Ed.2d 154 (1972) (citations omitted). As a final First Amendment consideration, Mr. Doe alleges that Utah's statute is overbroad. Specifically, Mr. Doe argues that the law is unconstitutional because it allows the state to collect the internet identifiers of individuals who are required to register under the reporting statute because of their involvement with a kidnapping offense. According to Mr. Doe, because these offenders' underlying offenses are not sex-related crimes, the statute is not narrowly drawn to serve the stated purpose of investigating sex-related crimes. (Appellant's Reply Br. at 18.) However, the most recent enactment of the statute allows state officials to access online identifiers to assist in investigating kidnapping and sex-related crimes, § 77-27-21.5(2) (emphasis added), and we are not persuaded that individuals convicted of kidnapping offenses constitute third parties whose speech is more likely to be protected by the First Amendment than the plaintiff's speech, D.L.S. v. Utah, 374 F.3d 971, 976 (10th Cir.2004); see also Members of City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 802, 104 S.Ct. 2118, 80 L.Ed.2d 772 (1984) ([I]f the ordinance may be validly applied to [the plaintiff], it can validly be applied to most if not all ... parties not before the Court.).