Opinion ID: 2972770
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The City of Dearborn’s Narrowing Construction

Text: Responding to the plaintiffs’ claim that the Ordinance impermissibly reaches small group speech, the city10of Dearborn offered a narrowing construction of the Ordinance, which the district court accepted. According to the city of Dearborn, an event only becomes a “special event” under the Ordinance, thus requiring a permit, when two things happen. First, an organized group having a common purpose or goal proceeds along a public street or public right of way. Second, the procession on the public right of way is such that it requires services from the city of Dearborn that are above and beyond the normal services allotted by the city for traffic control, crowding, street and property maintenance, and the protection of public health, safety, and welfare. Because small groups would presumably not require additional city services, the district court found that the city of Dearborn’s narrowing construction eliminated concerns that the Ordinance infringes upon small group speech. The plaintiffs argue, however, that the narrowing construction does not alleviate the Ordinance’s vagueness problems, and raises the threat of content-based classifications by city officials. A federal court may choose to adopt a narrowing construction if that construction is both “reasonable” and “readily apparent.” Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U.S. 914, 944 (2000). Surprisingly in this case, the narrowing construction offered by the city of Dearborn fails to alleviate any of the defects in the Ordinance, and is in fact more constitutionally suspect than the Ordinance without the narrowing construction. The narrowing construction creates two vagueness problems which would otherwise not exist. As has been noted, the narrowing construction would require a permit for a parade or procession if the event required additional city services to properly provide for traffic and crowd control. However, nowhere in the Ordinance does it state the circumstances under which a parade or procession requires additional city services. A group of two or three protesters advocating an unpopular message may provoke the ire of the citizens they pass, perhaps requiring Dearborn police officers to control an unruly crowd of hecklers. Because their protest required the use of additional city services, the narrowing construction would require a permit. Yet a larger group of people, say of ten or fifteen people advocating a popular message, may not require additional city services because of the popularity of their cause. The Ordinance, as understood with the narrowing construction, is thus unconstitutionally vague because it offers no guidance to citizens regarding when they would be required to apply for a permit. Not only does the narrowing construction fail to remedy the problem it intended to address – its potential application to small groups – but it also 10 The city of Dearborn also claimed that the city’s parks were exempted from the Ordinance, and thus a rally held in a park would not require a permit. However, this contention contradicts the plain language of the Ordinance, which explicitly states that a permit is required for “any special event upon any street, park, or public area of the City.” Ordinance, § 1. The city’s arguments notwithstanding, we are not prepared to accept a narrowing construction that exempts a word from the Ordinance which is explicitly included in the Ordinance. See City of Richmond, 743 F.2d at 1358 (refusing to adopt an offered narrowing construction because it “tortures the plain language of the Richmond Ordinance”). No. 04-1433 American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Page 12 Committee, et al. v. City of Dearborn fails at its primary function: providing proper notice to citizens of how to conform their conduct to the Ordinance. This raises the narrowing construction’s second problem: unbridled discretion on the part of Dearborn city officials, and the threat of content-based discrimination. Because a citizen planning a march cannot know whether the march will require additional city services, the decision whether a march requires a permit is left to Dearborn city officials. As Sergeant Stanton testified, when determining the need for police resources, he “do[es] some research there as to what the message is being sent and would it be offensive to other people where they would counter-protest.” Under certain circumstances, then, an unpopular march will require a notice period and approval, while a popular march of the same size would not require a notice period or approval. More importantly, under the narrowing construction, it is the content of the message, and the response of other citizens to the message’s content, that will determine whether or not a notice period and approval by the city council is needed. See Church of the Am. Knights of the K.K.K. v. City of Gary, 334 F.3d 676, 68081 (7th Cir. 2003) (“To allow denial on such a ground would be to authorize a ‘heckler’s veto.’ It follows pretty directly that a city cannot in lieu of denying the permit charge the applicant for the expense to the city of reining in the hecklers.”). The narrowing construction thus poses severe vagueness problems, which in turn lead to the real threat of content-based considerations under Dearborn’s permit scheme. See Forsyth County, 505 U.S. at 134. Because the offered narrowing construction leads to severe First Amendment deficiencies, we decline the invitation to accept Dearborn’s narrowing construction.