Opinion ID: 77679
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Appellant's Facial Challenge: Restriction on Speech Is Content-Based

Text: 42 As a threshold matter, we must ask whether the First Amendment protects the conduct at issue in the challenged ordinance—playing or broadcasting recorded music. It does. The Supreme Court has clearly stated that the First Amendment protects music, as a form of speech and expression, from governmental censorship and control. Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 790, 109 S.Ct. 2746, 105 L.Ed.2d 661 (1989). Although the First Amendment protects the right to broadcast recorded music, the government may, nevertheless, impose reasonable restrictions on the time, place and manner in which persons exercise this right, subject to certain provisos. Those provisos are that: 1) the restrictions are content-neutral; 2) they are narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest, and 3) they leave open ample alternative channels of communication. Ward, 491 U.S. at 791, 109 S.Ct. 2746. 8 43 The ordinance at issue here does not contain any blanket prohibitions on the right to play or broadcast music. The ordinance regulates sound volume according to a standard that addresses the needs of two different audiences—a nuisance standard for involuntary listeners and what is presumably a public health standard for voluntary listeners. It prohibits the use or operation of sound equipment such as radios, phonographs and televisions in such manner as to disturb the peace, quiet and comfort of the neighboring inhabitant, or at any time, with louder volume than is necessary for convenient hearing for the person or persons who are in the room, vehicle or chamber in which such machine or device is operated and who are voluntary listeners thereto. MIAMI-DADE COUNTY FL., CODE § 21-28(b) (1958, as amended 1996). 44 L.C. argues that the ordinance is invalid on its face because it restricts the volume at which individuals may play recorded sounds based upon the content of the recordings. Alternatively, L.C. argues that even if the ordinance is deemed to be content-neutral, it fails to satisfy the constitutional requirements for regulating time, place and manner of speech.
45 The first-step in evaluating the constitutionality of an ordinance which restrains protected speech or expression is to determine whether the government is proscribing the speech because it disfavors the message. Ward, 491 U.S. at 791, 109 S.Ct. 2746; Solantic, LLC v. City of Neptune Beach, 410 F.3d 1250, 1258 (11th Cir.2005). In such a case, courts will subject the ordinance to strict scrutiny analysis. Solantic, 410 F.3d at 1258. If, however, the ordinance is content-neutral, courts will analyze it according to intermediate scrutiny (prongs 2 and 3 of the test articulated in Ward). The government's purpose is the controlling consideration at this stage of the inquiry. Ward, 491 U.S. at 791, 109 S.Ct. 2746. Government regulation of expressive activity is content-neutral so long as it is justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech. Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288, 293, 104 S.Ct. 3065, 82 L.Ed.2d 221 (1984). 46 Accordingly, when we apply this standard to the ordinance at issue, we find, as the district court did, that the ordinance is content-neutral. On its face, it does not disallow certain types of recorded noise or particular viewpoints. It does not distinguish, for example, between excessively loud singing, thunderous classical music recordings, reverberating bass beats, or television broadcasts of raucous World Cup soccer finals. It simply prohibits excessively loud noise from recorded sources, whether radio, television, phonographs, etc. 47 Although L.C. argues that the ordinance is not content-neutral because it sets vague standards for what constitutes unreasonably loud, excessive, unnecessary or unusual noise, which invite subjective enforcement based upon content of the sound, the government's purpose is controlling. See Ward, 491 U.S. at 791, 109 S.Ct. 2746. L.C. did not allege that the County adopted the ordinance because it wanted to silence music with a certain content such as dance-club music, and the text of the ordinance is facially neutral. 48