Opinion ID: 2091872
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Political Expression

Text: One way a claimant can try to meet this burden is to show that his or her expressive activity was political. If a claimant succeeds in that attempt, the State must demonstrate that its action has not materially burdened the claimant's opportunity to engage in political expression. See Price, 622 N.E.2d at 963-64. This approach reflects our recognition that political expression is often beyond the scope of the delegated police power. In Price we reviewed the history of constitutional development in Indiana and concluded that implicit in the evolving protection for expression under the Indiana Bill of Rights is the idea that political expression is generally consistent with the goals of the police power. 622 N.E.2d at 961-63. Indeed, most political expression ultimately serves everyone's interests in peace, safety, and well-being. See id. at 962. Consequently, we held that pure [9] political expression cannot be said to constitute an abuse within the police power unless it inflicts upon determinable parties harm of a gravity analogous to that required under tort law. Id. at 964. [10] Our opinion in Price reveals that the common feature of political expression is reference to state action. For example, we referred to expressive activity that is occasioned by the conduct of government actors and regards a matter of public concern. Id. at 961. Expressive activity is political, for the purposes of the responsibility clause, if its point is to comment on government action, whether applauding an old policy or proposing a new one, or opposing a candidate for office or criticizing the conduct of an official acting under color of law. [11] The judicial quest is for some express or clearly implied reference to governmental action. In contrast, where an individual's expression focuses on the conduct of a private partyincluding the speaker himself or herselfit is not political. In Price, the State conceded that Colleen Price was protesting police treatment of another citizen before an officer warned her to be quiet. 622 N.E.2d at 956-57. After the warning, her expression did shift to a defense of her own conduct, id. at 957, but a conviction for disorderly conduct requires proof of unreasonable noise both before and after an official warning. See Ind.Code Ann. § 35-45-1-3(2) (West Supp.1996). It was the State's reliance on Price's pre-warning political expression to prove an essential element of the offense that was fatal to the conviction. A court need not engage in speculation as to what a speaker might have meant. We will judge the nature of expression by an objective standard, and the burden of proof is on the claimant to demonstrate that his or her expression would have been understood as political. If the expression, viewed in context, is ambiguous, a reviewing court should find that the claimant has not established that it was political and should evaluate the constitutionality of any state-imposed restriction of the expression under standard rationality review. See Price, 622 N.E.2d at 959-60. If, however, a claimant succeeds in demonstrating that his or her expression was political, we may assume that the expression did not undermine peace, safety, and well-being. To sustain the challenged state action, the State must demonstrate that its action did not materially burden the claimant's political expression. Our opinion in Price suggests that state action does not impose a material burden on expression if either the magnitude of the impairment is slight, 622 N.E.2d at 960 n. 7, or the expression threatens to inflict particularized harm analogous to tortious injury on readily identifiable private interests, id. at 964.