Opinion ID: 3050859
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Permit Requirement

Text: The majority’s description of the permit requirement is a triumph of misdirection, upholding a speech registration scheme but relying upon cases that instead uphold much less troublesome systems of speech coordination. In general,“the government may impose reasonable restrictions on the time, place, or manner of protected speech, provided the restrictions are justified without reference to the context of the regulated speech, that they are narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest, and that they leave open ample alternative channels for communication.” Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 791 (1989) (internal quotation marks omitted). Under this standard, even in a public forum, governments may regulate to allow all voices to be heard through “coordination of use,” Santa Monica Food Not Bombs v. Santa Monica, 450 F.3d 1022, 1036 (9th Cir. 2006) — by, for instance, ensuring that a parade does not march right through a street festival or unduly interfere with street traffic. Such “coordination of use” is, in other words, a significant governmental interest. As the general time, place, or manner standard indicates, however, this authority to regulate speech is limited even when there is a legitimate coordination purpose to be served: “The government’s right to limit expressive activity in a public forum is sharply circumscribed” and our review is searching and careful. ACLU II, 466 F.3d at 791 (quoting S.O.C., Inc. v. County of Clark, 152 F.3d 1136, 1145 (9th Cir. 1998)); see also Santa Monica Food not Bombs, 450 F.3d at 1035-36 (9th Cir. 2006) (same); A.C.L.U. v. City of Las Vegas, 333 F.3d 1092, 1098 (9th Cir. 2003) (“ACLU I”) (same); Foti v. City of Menlo Park, 146 F.3d 629, 635 (9th Cir. 1998) (same); Grossman v. City of Portland, 33 F.3d 1200, 1204-05 (9th Cir. 1994) (same). We are particularly skeptical of coordination permit requirements which are, after all, “prior restrain- t[s]” on speech and therefore raise serious concerns over BERGER v. CITY OF SEATTLE 251 limits on spontaneous expression. Grossman, 33 F.3d at 1205 n. 9 (quoting Rosen v. Port of Portland, 641 F.2d 1243, 1250 (9th Cir. 1981)); see also Santa Monica Food Not Bombs, 450 F.3d at 1052-53 (upholding some permitting requirements, but not others, applicable only to large groups of people). But our usual careful inquiry into how well a permit system serves its coordination purpose cannot even begin in this case. For the Seattle Center’s registration scheme serves no coordination purpose at all. Instead, it serves only one purpose: To allow the government to know who is planning to engage in communication through street performance at the Seattle Center at some indeterminate time in the future. This “purpose,” such as it is, is not a permissible governmental interest at all, much less a significant one. More specifically: The Seattle Center requires all street performers to obtain a permit from the Director of the Seattle Center, valid for one year, in order to perform. The permits have nothing to do with where or when the performance will occur. In fact, “[s]pecific performance times will not be assigned to a performer by the Center.” (Emphasis added). Instead, “[p]erformance locations are available on a first come first served basis.” “If the performer abandons the location, for any reason, the location may be utilized by another performer. Locations may not be ‘saved’ or ‘reserved.’ ” So it is the large number of well-located performance spots — a restriction which I am willing to assume is valid in this unusual context — that reduce performer conflicts over space. The permit requirement has nothing to do with the space allocation effort, but is simply a gratuitous restriction on speech.4 4 On its face, the rules apply very broadly indeed. The Seattle Center’s rules define a “street performer” as “a member of the general public who engages in any performing art or the playing of any musical instrument, singing or vocalizing, with or without musical accompaniment, and whose performance is not an official part of an event sponsored by the Seattle Center or by a Seattle Center licensee.” Protest songs, playing the guitar 252 BERGER v. CITY OF SEATTLE I am aware of no case — ever— that has approved a permit requirement in a traditional public forum where there is absolutely no coordination of use purpose. The majority has cited none. Given that speech registration is, by its nature, only justifiable if it serves a significant government interest, it is not surprising that such cases do not exist. Indeed, we have expressed profound skepticism of such permits even when they do serve a coordination purpose. In Grossman, for instance, we struck down a permit requirement for demonstrating or gathering in parks in Portland, Oregon that was designed to “permit efficient time, place and manner regulation,” 33 F.3d at 1205 n. 9 (internal quotation marks omitted), and which required permit applicants to register seven days in advance of any gathering, “describing the details of the planned event” in their applications. Id. at 1204. Although we “sympathize[d] with the City’s concern for the safety and convenience of park users,” we could not agree that this interest could justify the “substantial restrictions” inherent in a permit to speak. Id. at 1206. “Both the procedural hurdle of filling out and submitting a written at a picnic, even whistling, are swept up into this broad requirement. Reading the text of the rule, I would have no difficulty holding that the rule is unconstitutionally overbroad. But Seattle urges us to read the definition far more narrowly than its text, to apply essentially only to professional street entertainers and buskers. While “it is common to consider a city’s authoritative interpretation of its guidelines and ordinances . . . [t]o affect the constitutional analysis, such a limiting construction must ‘be made explicit by textual incorporation, binding judicial or administrative construction, or well-established practice’.” Santa Monica Food Not Bombs v. Santa Monica, 450 F.3d 1022, 1035 (9th Cir. 2006) (quoting City of Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Publishing Co., 486 U.S. 750, 770 (1988)). There is no such binding construction or textual incorporation of the city’s asserted limits here, and it is not obvious to me that wellestablished practice at the Seattle Center indicates that the broad text of the rule has been so limited. Still, the majority thinks so; I am willing to go along because the rule cannot survive even with that narrowing construction. BERGER v. CITY OF SEATTLE 253 application and the temporal hurdle of waiting for the permit to be granted may discourage potential speakers.” Id.; see also N.A.A.C.P., Western Region v. City of Richmond, 743 F.2d 1346, 1355 (9th Cir. 1984) (“The simple knowledge that one must inform the government of his desire to speak and must fill out appropriate forms and comply with applicable regulations inhibits speech.”); Rosen, 641 F.2d at 1249 (advance notice “drastically burden[s] free speech”). So, although the Grossman permitting scheme did, unlike the permitting rule here, purport to serve the significant governmental interest of coordinating the use of public space, the burdens it created were too large to be endured. 33 F.3d at 1208-09. We have taken these burdens very seriously: In Rosen, where the permit ordinance required only one day’s notice and advance disclosure of the name of the speaker, we struck it down, holding that the “interest in knowing in advance what type of free speech activities may occur . . . is insufficient to justify an ordinance so broad in its application and with so chilling an impact on the exercise of [F]irst [A]mendment rights.” 641 F.2d at 1249. The Seattle Center scheme is not only unsupported by a governmental coordination interest; it also reaches individual speakers.5 This reach alone renders it suspect. When we have allowed coordination permits it has been for large groups: “As the cautionary language in our earlier opinions indicates, the significant governmental interest justifying the unusual step of requiring citizens to inform the government in advance of expressive activity has always been understood to arise only when large groups of people travel together on streets and sidewalks.” Santa Monica Food Not Bombs, 450 F.3d at 1039; see also Grossman, 33 F.3d at 1206 (“Some type of permit requirement may be justified in the case of large 5 The two features are, of course, closely related. Only large groups of people in public parks and on public streets create a need for coordination of uses of public space. 254 BERGER v. CITY OF SEATTLE groups, where the burden placed on park facilities and the possibility of interference with other park users is more substantial.”) (emphasis in original). Conversely, we have never countenanced the imposition of permits for individual speakers in public fora. Indeed, the possibility that the ordinance in Grossman could reach “the actions of single protestors,” was one of the reasons we struck that ordinance down as unconstitutional. Id.; see also Cox v. City of Charleston, South Carolina, 416 F.3d 281, 285 (4th Cir. 2005) (“[U]nflinching application” of a permit requirement “to groups as small as two or three renders it constitutionally infirm.”).6 In brief, then, we and other courts have expressed deep skepticism that a permit can ever be appropriate when applied to small groups or individuals. We have never approved such a permitting scheme, nor has any other court, as far as I am aware. Yet, the Seattle Center adopted, and the majority upholds, a permitting program that does not have a use coordination purpose, that applies on its face to individuals,7 and that imposes a prior restraint on speech with no purpose other 6 The majority badly misreads Charleston, Maj. Op. at 220 n. 14, holding the case irrelevant because it did not “announce a numerical floor below which a permit requirement cannot apply.” Charleston declined to do so because it felt that writing a hard rule was a legislative, not a judicial task, not because it countenanced permits for individual speech. Charleston, 416 F.3d at 286. The court was very clear that a permit ordinance attaching to small groups of individuals would be overbroad. See id. (collecting cases). It emphasized that any “legislative body” crafting a permit requirement “should tailor that requirement to ensure that it does not burden small gatherings posing no threat to the safety, order, and accessibility of streets and sidewalks.” Id. at 287. 7 Although street performers do, of course, hope to draw crowds, this goal is of little moment to the analysis. The individual protestors in Grossman and Charleston also undoubtedly hoped to attract crowds of people eager to learn their views. We have, in any event, emphasized that coordination permits are only appropriate for far more substantial crowds than any street performer is likely to draw at one time. See Santa Monica Food Not Bombs, 450 F.3d at 1043 n. 17 (“Whether 150 people is the outside [lower] limit for a permitting requirement is a question we do not decide, except to caution that a substantially lower number may well not comport comfortably with the limited governmental interests at play in public parks and open spaces.”). BERGER v. CITY OF SEATTLE 255 than to make government surveillance and control of the speakers easier.8 It is hard to think of a more obviously unconstitutional measure in the First Amendment context. The majority, nonetheless, relies on a few coordination cases to uphold this offensive registration scheme. Its cases, Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U.S. 569 (1941), Poulos v. New Hampshire, 345 U.S. 395 (1953), and Thomas v. Chicago Park Dist., 534 U.S. 316 (2002), say nothing about speech registration. All three cases upheld coordination programs, not registration schemes. That these cases upheld permits actually serving a “time, place, or manner”-related purpose does not suggest that we should uphold a permitting program that does no such thing. Cox, for example, upheld a permit requirement for parades, public meetings, and “theatrical or dramatic representation[s]” which required each permit application to “specify the day and hour” of the planned performance. Cox, 312 U.S. at 571 & n. 1. The permits in Cox thus genuinely did regulate the “time, place and manner” of parades and demonstrations “in relation to the other proper uses of the streets.” Id. at 576. In Poulos, a coordination requirement was also at issue. See Poulos, 345 U.S. at 398 n. 2 (setting forth a “day and hour” coordination requirement for permits). Once again the Court upheld the rule, this time in the context of religious services, because the requirement “merely call[ed] for the adjustment 8 That the Seattle Center does not require a permit for each separate speech act but one permit to cover a year’s speech does not ameliorate these concerns. Permit issuance is not instant and, even if it were, anyone who wishes to spontaneously perform in the park must seek out the permit office (if it is open) and fill out forms before they speak. The absence of a specified waiting period does not alter the practical reality that every permit application system imposes some delay. 256 BERGER v. CITY OF SEATTLE of the unrestrained exercise of religions with the reasonable comfort and convenience of the whole city.” Id. at 405.9 Thomas also considered a permitting-based coordination plan that conformed permitted activities with other uses and with general park purposes, see Thomas, 534 U.S. at 379 n. 1 (setting forth permit requirements), and upheld the permit requirement because it was designed “to coordinate multiple uses of limited space,” among other related purposes. Id. at 322. Thomas was decided quite narrowly and does not provide carte blanche for park permits, despite what the majority suggests. Most importantly, because the petitioners in Thomas challenged the ordinance in question only on the ground that it conferred allegedly over-broad permitting discretion, the Court did not consider other concerns that might be relevant here. See id. at 322 & n. 3 (“Petitioners do not argue that the Park District’s ordinance fails to satisfy other requirements of our time, place, and manner jurisprudence. . . .”). We have twice recognized Thomas’s limited scope. See Santa Monica Food Not Bombs, 450 F.3d at 1037 n. 15 (“Appellants here challenge the ‘other’ requirements of time, place, and manner jurisprudence, explicitly not at issue in Thomas.”); Galvin v. Hay, 374 F.3d 739, 747 n. 5 (9th Cir. 2004) (“The Court in Thomas considered only a challenge to the breadth of official discretion” and not other issues.). In short, the law is clear: Permits for speech in traditional public fora are disfavored and may be upheld only when they are tailored to serve a coordination of use purpose, including traffic and safety concerns, created by large groups of individuals engaging in First Amendment-protected activity. Inconsistency with this long-established principle is enough to show that the Seattle Center’s rule is fundamentally flawed. 9 I note that Cox and Poulos both antedated the development of the modern standard for approving time, place, and manner restrictions in public fora, and may not be fully controlling after that development. BERGER v. CITY OF SEATTLE 257 But there is more. The Supreme Court has consistently struck down speech registration permitting programs in the one context, solicitation of private homes, where they have been put in place with some regularity. There is no interest present here greater than those the Court deemed insufficient to support speech registration in that context. In Watchtower Bible, for instance, a small Ohio village required solicitors to register before going door to door to prevent fraud, protect residential privacy, and prevent crime. 536 U.S. at 168-69. The Supreme Court struck down the registration scheme because it imposed significant First Amendment burdens, including a heavy burden on spontaneous speech. Id. at 166-67. Watchtower Bible was not the first time that the Court had struck down license requirements for solicitors on First Amendment grounds. See also Cantwell v. State of Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 306-07 (1990) (striking down license requirement for religious solicitation); Village of Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Environment, 444 U.S. 620, 638-39 (1980) (striking down solicitation permit requirement); Schneider v. State of New Jersey, 308 U.S. 147, 152 (1939) (striking down permitting scheme for all forms of solicitation). Speech in public parks is no less protected than speech on citizens’ doorsteps. And the Seattle Center asserts no stronger interests than those forwarded in the house-to-house solicitation context. That, as the majority notes, Maj. Op. at 222-23 n. 19, the permitting schemes in Cantwell, Schneider, and Village of Schaumburg had other fatal flaws does not alter the fundamentally “offensive” character of speech registration requirements. Watchtower Bible, 536 U.S. at 166. As Watchtower Bible made clear in the context of political or religious speech, but with reasoning that surely extends to artistic expression,10 even if the issuance of permits were purely a “ministe10 Just as door-to-door canvassing plays an “important role in our constitutional tradition of free and open discussion,” Watchtower Bible, 536 258 BERGER v. CITY OF SEATTLE rial task,” performed promptly and for free, “a law requiring a permit to engage in such speech constitutes a dramatic departure from our national heritage and constitutional tradition.” Id. I note, finally, that even if registration to identify speakers were ever acceptable, it is, from a purely practical perspective, entirely unnecessary here. The rule targets street performers, not anonymous members of the public. Such people stake their careers on being readily identifiable, develop distinctive shows, and are frequent return visitors to their performance sites. It would not be hard for a police officer patrolling the Seattle Center to recognize a rogue fireswallower. Indeed, incident reports in the record make reference to such distinctive characters as a hula-hooping magician and “the puppet guy.” If Seattle Center officials are having trouble tracking down such easily identifiable characters, which I doubt, the solution is to pay more attention, not to do violence to the Constitution.11 U.S. at 162, so too does the use of public parks for artistic and creative endeavors (which may also often include political content) have deep roots: Parks are classically thrown open to public expression. See Perry Educ. Ass’n, 460 U.S. at 46 (1983). For this reason, the majority’s claim that Watchtower Bible is inapposite because street performing is not as important as religious and political canvassing, Maj. Op. at 222, is not persuasive. And the majority’s “most important[ ]”, id., distinction — that the ordinance in Watchtower Bible “bore no relation to the municipality’s stated purposes” while the permit requirement is closely related to government interests — makes little sense. The permit requirement here in fact shares the problems discussed in Watchtower Bible. 11 As the majority notes, Maj. Op. at 218 n. 13, the Seattle Center’s badge requirement is intimately connected to the permit requirement: The permits are to “be evidenced by a badge that shall be worn or displayed by a performer in plain view at all times during a performance.” Because I believe that the permit requirement itself is unconstitutional and because no badges will be issued without permits, I have no need to decide whether an independent badge requirement in this context would be constitutional. I therefore do not concur in Part III.B of the majority opinion, which upholds the badge requirement, premised largely on the supposed constitutionality of the permit requirement. BERGER v. CITY OF SEATTLE 259