Opinion ID: 3037685
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Permitting Requirements Under the Events

Text: Ordinance a. Review Includes the Administrative Instruction Before addressing the merits of Food Not Bombs’ challenge to the Events Ordinance, we must take another detour and address the scope of this facial challenge. At oral argument, there was some confusion over the role played by the Administrative Instruction. On the one hand, the Events Ordinance does call for promulgation of “administrative regulations that are consistent with and that further the terms and requirements set forth within this Chapter.” SMMC § 4.68.200. On the other hand, counsel for Santa Monica stated that although available to the public online, the Instruction principally is meant to bind staff in their application of the Events Ordinance, including as a prosecutorial directive. Appellants’ counsel, for her part, maintained that the Events Ordinance, not the Instruction, informs the public as to what the law is. In like circumstances, it is common to consider a city’s authoritative interpretation of its guidelines and ordinances. See Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement, 505 U.S. 123, 131 (1992) (“In evaluating respondent’s facial challenge, we SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA 6671 must consider the county’s authoritative constructions of the ordinance, including its own implementation and interpretation of it.”); Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 795-96 (1989) (“Administrative interpretation and implementation of a regulation are, of course, highly relevant to our analysis, for ‘[i]n evaluating a facial challenge to a state law, a federal court must . . . consider any limiting construction that a state court or enforcement agency has proffered.’ ” (quoting Hoffman Estates v. The Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U.S. 489, 494 n.5 (1982) (alterations in original))). To affect the constitutional analysis, such a limiting construction must “be made explicit by textual incorporation, binding judicial or administrative construction, or well-established practice.” City of Lakewood, 486 U.S. at 770. [8] The district court found that “[t]he City has adopted Administrative Instruction II-4-4 . . . as amended July 7, 2003, to provide specific standards and guidelines for implementation of the Community Events Ordinance.” See Ward, 491 U.S. at 795 (looking to district court’s express findings). The Instruction is thus binding on the City’s enforcement staff, as well as explicitly authorized by the ordinance. That the Instruction has been amended a number of times does not affect its pertinence, as the amendments, like the original Instruction, are publicly available. The Instruction is therefore properly viewed as Santa Monica’s authoritative interpretation of the Events Ordinance, and we review the constitutionality of the ordinance in light of the Instruction. b. Breadth of the Advance Notice and Permitting Requirements [9] The Events Ordinance applies to “ ‘public places’ historically associated with the free exercise of expressive activities, such as streets, sidewalks, and parks.” United States v. Grace, 461 U.S. 171, 177 (1983). Such places “are considered, without more, to be ‘public forums.’ ” Id.; Hague v. CIO, 307 U.S. 496, 515 (1939) (“[S]treets and parks . . . have 6672 SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions. Such use of the streets and public places has, from ancient times, been a part of the privileges, immunities, rights, and liberties of citizens.”); Grossman v. City of Portland, 33 F.3d 1200, 1204 (9th Cir. 1994) (describing public parks as “the quintessential public forums” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). [10] Notwithstanding the primacy of such areas as locations for communicative activity among citizens, “in order to regulate competing uses of public forums, [local governments] may impose a permit requirement on those wishing to hold a march, parade, or rally.” Forsyth County, 505 U.S. at 130. Such control, however, “[must be] exerted so as not to deny or unwarrantedly abridge the right of assembly and the opportunities for the communication of thought and the discussion of public questions immemorially associated with resort to public places.” Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U.S. 569, 574 (1941). As traditional public fora, parks, sidewalks, and streets “provide a free forum for those who cannot afford newspaper advertisements, television infomercials, or billboards.” Grossman, 33 F.3d at 1205. Those fora must not be regulated too restrictively, lest they become unavailable to those who have little or no recourse to other, often costly, areas for public discourse. [11] At the same time, although schemes imposing prior restraints on protected speech face a “heavy presumption against validity,” Forsyth County, 505 U.S. at 130 (internal quotation marks omitted), time, place, and manner regulations of speech in public areas bear a somewhat lighter burden, so long as they are content neutral. See id.; see also Thomas v. Chicago Park Dist., 534 U.S. 316, 322 (2002). Their purpose is the coordination of use, not the preclusion of particular expression. Although Food Not Bombs maintains otherwise, it is apparent that under Thomas, the Events Ordinance must SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA 6673 be viewed as a content-neutral time, place, and manner permitting scheme, not as a scheme imposing “subject matter censorship” through prior restraint. See Thomas, 534 U.S. at 322-23 (“ ‘A licensing standard which gives an official authority to censor the content of a speech differs toto coelo from one limited by its terms, or by nondiscriminatory practice, to considerations of public safety and the like.’ ” (quoting Niemotko v. Maryland, 340 U.S. 268, 282 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring in result))). This conclusion is compelled by the marked parallels between the Events Ordinance and the ordinance at issue in Thomas. In reaching its conclusion that the Thomas permitting ordinance was subject to review under the standard applied to time, place, and manner regulations, the Supreme Court noted that (1) “[n]one of the grounds for denying a permit has anything to do with what a speaker might say”; (2) “the ordinance (unlike the classic censorship scheme) is not even directed to communicative activity as such, but rather to all activity conducted in a public park”; and (3) the object of the permitting scheme was “to coordinate multiple uses of limited space, to assure preservation of the park facilities, to prevent uses that are dangerous, unlawful, or impermissible under the Park District’s rules, and to assure financial accountability for damage caused by the event” rather than to exclude expression based on any particular content. Id. at 322. Although the Events Ordinance differs from that in Thomas in certain respects, it shares these three characteristics. Additionally, the provision laying out the criteria governing the issuance of permits under the Events Ordinance concludes: In deciding whether to approve an application, no consideration may be given to the message of the event, the content of speech, the identity or associational relationships of the applicant, or to any assumptions or predictions as to the amount of hostility which may be aroused in the public by the content of speech or message conveyed by the event. 6674 SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA SMMC § 4.68.060.14 The Events Ordinance thus falls more comfortably under the purview of the content-neutral time, place, and manner regulation category subject to intermediate scrutiny, than it does under that of the content-based prior restraint category. Like the ordinance in Thomas, “ ‘[t]he [permit] required is not the kind of prepublication license deemed a denial of liberty since the time of John Milton but a ministerial, police routine for adjusting the rights of citizens so that the opportunity for effective freedom of speech may be preserved.’ ” Thomas, 534 U.S. at 323 (second alteration in original) (quoting Poulos v. New Hampshire, 345 U.S. 395, 403 (1953)). “[E]ven content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions,” however, “can be applied in such a manner as to stifle free expression.” Id. In particular, “[a]dvance notice or registration requirements [can] drastically burden free speech.” Rosen v. Port of Portland, 641 F.2d 1243, 1249 (9th Cir. 1981). The restrictions therefore “must meet certain constitutional requirements.” Forsyth County, 505 U.S. at 130. Such restrictions (1) must not delegate overly broad discretion to a government official; (2) must not be based on the content of the message; (3) must be narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest; and (4) must leave open ample alternatives for communication. Id.; see also Galvin v. Hay, 374 F.3d 739, 746 (9th Cir. 2004).15 14 Appellants do not raise a discrete challenge to any specific criterion as providing undue discretion to administrators to engage in content-based determinations, presumably in light of this provision. 15 Although the ordinance at issue in Thomas had many features similar to those challenged here, “[t]he Court in Thomas considered only a challenge to the breadth of official discretion, not ‘[the other] requirements of [the] time, place, and manner jurisprudence.’ ” Galvin, 374 F.3d at 747 n.5 (quoting Thomas, 534 U.S. at 323 n.3); see also Thomas, 534 U.S. at 323 (“Where the licensing official enjoys unduly broad discretion in determining whether to grant or deny a permit, there is a risk that he will disfavor speech based on its content.” (emphasis added)). Appellants here challenge the “other” requirements of time, place, and manner jurisprudence, explicitly not at issue in Thomas. SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA 6675 [12] As noted, Food Not Bombs does not identify any of the permitting criteria as containing a grant of overly broad discretion. Food Not Bombs, however, does argue that the Events Ordinance, as implemented by the Instruction, allows for content-based application because it treats expressive events more favorably than others. The Instruction, however does not distinguish among the expressive events based on their content, and therefore satisfies the content-neutrality requirement for valid, time, place, and manner regulations. See City of Richmond, 743 F.2d at 1354 (“The [parade] ordinance requires all speakers, regardless of the content of their message, to provide . . . advance notice . . . .” (emphasis added)); Glendale Assocs., Ltd. v. NLRB, 347 F.3d 1145, 1155 (9th Cir. 2003) (“A rule is content-neutral if it is unconcerned with the literal content of the spoken or written words. . . . [S]peech-regulating rules are content-neutral when the rule is not related to the subject or topic of the speech.” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). We therefore consider whether the challenged provisions of the Events Ordinance are narrowly tailored and leave open ample alternatives for communication.
[13] A narrowly-tailored permitting regulation need not be the least restrictive means of furthering a locality’s asserted interests. The regulation may not, however, burden substantially more speech than necessary to achieve a scheme’s important goals. See United States v. Baugh, 187 F.3d 1037, 1043 (9th Cir. 1999). “[T]he requirement of narrow tailoring is satisfied ‘so long as the . . . regulation promotes a substantial government interest that would be achieved less effectively absent the regulation.’ ” Ward, 491 U.S. at 799 (quoting United States v. Albertini, 472 U.S. 675, 689 (1985)). As we have noted, local governments can exercise their substantial interest in regulating competing uses of traditional public fora by imposing permitting requirements for certain 6676 SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA uses. See Cox, 312 U.S. at 574 (“The authority of a municipality to impose regulations in order to assure the safety and convenience of the people in the use of public highways has never been regarded as inconsistent with civil liberties but rather as one of the means of safeguarding the good order upon which they ultimately depend.”); Rosen, 641 F.2d at 1247 (“The governmental interest in regulating parades, when large groups use public streets and disrupt traffic by causing major arteries to be closed and transportation rerouted, is apparent.” (emphasis added)); Grossman, 33 F.3d at 1206 (“Some type of permit requirement may be justified in the case of large groups, where the burden placed on park facilities and the possibility of interference with other park users is more substantial.”). Food Not Bombs advances two reasons why the Events Ordinance is not sufficiently narrowly tailored to those substantive interests: First, Food Not Bombs contends that because the advance notice permit requirement is applicable to groups smaller than 150, the Events Ordinance does not advance the asserted governmental interest relating to the use of public spaces by large groups. Second, Food Not Bombs questions whether the temporal aspect of the two-day advance notice requirement is sufficiently narrowly tailored. We address each contention in turn. (a) As to the first point — the claimed ill-fit with the asserted governmental interests — Food Not Bombs points to two different aspects of the Events Ordinance, one pertaining to the use of streets, sidewalks, and park paths for marches and similar events and the other applicable to gatherings in parks and other public spaces. (i) First, under SMMC § 4.68.040(a), a permit is required for: A parade, procession, march or assembly consisting of persons, animals, vehicles, or any other combinaSANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA 6677 tion thereof, which is to assemble or travel in unison on any public street, highway, alley, sidewalk or other City-designated public way and which either (1) may impede, obstruct, impair or interfere with free use of such public street, highway, alley, sidewalk, or other public way owned, controlled, or maintained by the City or (2) does not comply with the normal or usual traffic regulations or controls .... (emphases added). Pursuant to the Instruction, “[a] march, procession, walk, run, or assembly on public sidewalks or City park paths [is] . . . required to obtain a . . . [permit] only if it is likely to: interfere with the free use of any public way . . . or not comply with traffic regulations.” Instruction at 23 (Section V(4)) (emphasis added). The Instruction also provides a “safe harbor” to groups potentially affected by this provision, which applies to only sidewalks and park paths: [A] march, procession, walk, run or assembly, will not interfere with the free use by others of a public sidewalk or City park path and is not required to obtain a Community Event Permit if the total group consists of 500 or fewer participants and if all participants: [(1)] [a]ssemble, march, walk, or run in groups of less than 50, 2 abreast (to create spacing between groups), and give way to others they encounter on the public way[;] [(2)] do not obstruct traffic flow[; ] [(3)] obey all traffic regulations[;] [and (4)] obey all park regulations. Id. (Section V(4)(a)) (emphases added). Additionally, no permit is required for marches, processions, walks, and runs on public sidewalks and park paths involving more than 500 but fewer than 2,000 people, if the event otherwise complies with the safe harbor requirements and, in addition, the start times 6678 SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA are staggered, the group gathers at the start and finish of the event on private property, and the organizers plan for the parking needs of the event participants. Id. (Section V(4)(b)). With respect to public ways other than sidewalks or park paths — essentially, roadways of any kind — the Instruction contains no limiting construction specifying that permits are required only for events “likely” to interfere with free use of the road. Nor does the Instruction contain any specification concerning when an event on a street, as distinct from a sidewalk or park path, “may impede, obstruct, impair or interfere” with the free flow of traffic. Instead, for such locations the Ordinance applies to groups of any size and to any street in the City, and applies without regard to the group’s expectation of interference with the free flow of vehicular traffic or to whether interference actually occurs. [14] Food Not Bombs argues that because it lacks an explicit numerical floor, SMMC § 4.68.040(a), as implemented by the Instruction, potentially applies to activities of small groups of people traveling “in unison” even when the activities of such small groups do not significantly interfere with the public’s use of streets, sidewalks, and park paths, and is therefore insufficiently narrowly tailored. Absent the implementing Instruction pertaining to sidewalks and park paths, we would agree. 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. See Rosen, 641 F.2d at 1247; see also Grossman, 33 F.3d at 1206; City of Richmond, 743 F.2d at 1355. Small groups, however, can also “march” and “assemble” for expressive purposes, and can do so without interfering with the free flow of traffic (except in the trivial respect that anyone walking on a public sidewalk or roadway takes up space and therefore prevents someone else from traveling precisely the same route). Without a provision SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA 6679 limiting the permitting requirements to larger groups, or some other provision tailoring the regulation to events that realistically present serious traffic, safety, and competing use concerns, significantly beyond those presented on a daily basis by ordinary use of the streets and sidewalks, a permitting ordinance is insufficiently narrowly tailored to withstand time, place, and manner scrutiny. The Sixth Circuit recently so held in American-Arab AntiDiscrimination Committee v. City of Dearborn, 418 F.3d 600 (6th Cir. 2005). In City of Dearborn, the court considered an ordinance that applied to “special events,” defined as “any walkathon, bikeathon, or jogging group or other organized group having a common purpose or goal, proceeding along a public street or other public right-of-way.” Id. at 608. The Dearborn ordinance provided that all “special events,” no matter the size, had to apply for a permit, which would then be granted if the city council determined that the event “[would] not in any manner act so as to breach the peace or unnecessarily interfere with the public use of the streets, sidewalks, parks and public areas . . . .” Id. at 603. Importing the analysis employed in Grossman (which concerned small groups in public parks) to apply to the Dearborn ordinance (which covered “special events” in streets, parks, and public areas), the court observed that “[p]ermit schemes and advance notice requirements that potentially apply to small groups are nearly always overly broad and lack narrow tailoring.” Id. at 608. The court held that the Dearborn ordinance was “hopelessly” overbroad because it applied, as does the ordinance here, to “any procession of people with a common purpose or goal, whether it be a small group of protestors or a group of senior citizens walking together to religious services.” Id. As such, the Dearborn ordinance was not narrowly tailored because: The city of Dearborn’s significant interest in crowd and traffic control, property maintenance, and protection of the public welfare is not advanced by the 6680 SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA application of the Ordinance to small groups. In most circumstances, the activity of a few people peaceably using a public right of way for a common purpose or goal does not trigger the city of Dear- born’s interest in safety and traffic control. Id. (citations omitted). The City of Dearborn court also took umbrage with the fact that the ordinance required small groups to seek a permit in the first instance; only after a permit was sought was the city council authorized to issue permits to those events that it found would not “unnecessarily interfere with the public use of the streets, sidewalks, parks and public areas.” Id. at 603 (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted). In other words, the Dearborn ordinance presumed an interference with government interests, even when common sense would dictate otherwise. [15] We find the reasoning in the City of Dear- born persuasive and hold that a narrowly tailored permit requirement must maintain a close relationship between the size of the event and its likelihood of implicating government interests. With respect to streets and sidewalks, as distinct from other public areas, SMMC § 4.68.040(a), like the Dearborn ordinance, contains no restriction as to the size of the group. It does, however, provide that organizers of only two sorts of group events must apply for a permit: (1) those that “may impede, obstruct, impair or interfere” with the free flow of traffic or (2) those that “do[ ] not comply with the normal or usual traffic regulations or controls.” SMMC § 4.68.040(a). The second permit trigger is narrowly tailored, as its application is limited only to events that actually implicate the governmental interest in enforcement of established traffic regulations. The first permit trigger, however, standing alone, is not narrowly tailored under our precedents and City of Dearborn, because it lacks any specification as to the size of the group covered and contains no other sufficiently close tie to the government interest in the free flow of traffic. SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA 6681 As with the criterion relating to the violation of traffic regulations, it would have been simple enough to tailor the permitting requirement to marches, processions and assemblies that the organizer expects or intends actually to impede traffic flow. Other similar Santa Monica ordinances are so limited. See id. § 5.06.020 (specifying that no permit is required for “noncommercial food distribution that does not interfere with the free use of the sidewalk or street” (emphasis added)); id. § 3.12.810 (prohibiting any pedestrian from “stand[ing] in any roadway or street other than in a safety zone or in a cross walk if such action interferes with the lawful movement of traffic” (emphasis added)). The Events Ordinance, however, instead requires organizers of marches, processions and assemblies, with no further guidance and no limitation as to the size of the group, to project in advance whether their event on a public street or sidewalk “may” prove an impediment to the free flow of traffic. “May” is a term of nearly infinite elasticity, given the unbounded variety of human events. While many things are quite unlikely to happen, almost anything physically possible “may” happen. Thus, while “[i]n most circumstances, the activity of a few people peaceably using a public right of way for a common purpose or goal does not trigger the city[’s] . . . interest in safety and traffic control,” City of Dearborn, 418 F.3d at 608, unforeseen circumstances “may” result in unintended and unexpected impediment of traffic. For example, a member of the group could injure herself, necessitating emergency services, or the street or sidewalk could be especially crowded that day for reasons not connected with the group’s activities and not predictable. As no organizer of a small group event can rule out that any of these circumstances “may” occur, events will be subject to the permitting requirement even though, in the vast majority of instances, there will in fact be no interference with the quotidian traffic norm. The term “may,” in other words, simply takes in too many circumstances that do not, as matters actually turn out, impli6682 SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA cate the governmental interests justifying the permitting requirement. The “may impede” requirement thus does not prove a meaningful operational distinction between Santa Monica’s Events Ordinance and the ordinance struck down in City of Dearborn, and does not cure the absence of any limiting group size threshold. We observe as well that there are obvious alternative ways the City could adjust the Events Ordinance so that it is appropriately tailored to its asserted interests. A group size specification or a limitation to actual impediment, using language similar to the Food Ordinance, are two examples already mentioned. Other possibilities might include a focus on whether the group plans to interfere with traffic; specification of a significantly heightened probability of impediment or obstruction, beyond what “may” happen; or a prohibition on walking or assembling directly in the path of traffic on specified roadways. Time, place, and manner restrictions need not, of course, be the least restrictive alternative available. See Ward, 491 U.S. at 798. As we have observed in the past, however, where there are easily available alternative modes of regulation that both satisfy the government’s substantial, legitimate concerns and affect considerably less speech than the mode chosen, we are likely to conclude, as we do here, that the governmental restriction sweeps in substantially more speech than is necessary to meet the government’s concerns. See Galvin, 374 F.3d at 753. [16] With respect to sidewalks and public paths, however, the Instruction does contain a limiting construction of the “may impede” requirement. That construction limits the application of the “may impede” requirement for sidewalks and park paths to circumstances in which interference is “likely.” Instruction at 23 (Section V(4)). It also specifies conditions under which even relatively large groups can demonstrate without being deemed “likely” to interfere with the flow of SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA 6683 traffic. Id. We conclude that these two clarifying additions to the Events Ordinance sufficiently limit the permit requirement to those situations in which the significant governmental interests in regulating conflicting uses of sidewalks and public paths are in play. The “likely to interfere” standard provides an objective standard that, as we read it, applies when a reasonable person viewing the situation in advance would anticipate significant interference with the ordinary flow of traffic.16 Whether an event meets the “likely to interfere” standard will turn on the reasonable expectations of the organizers of the event, given the size of the group, the precise plans for the event, whether the intention is to block traffic or to avoid doing so, and the predictable conditions at the location and time the organizers have chosen. The safe harbor provision, in turn, does not require groups engaged in expressive activity to abide by its standards, but does establish a definitely ascertainable standard that, if followed, eliminates any possibility that interference will be considered “likely.” This combination of a general but narrow standard with a more specific alternative makes for a close fit with the governmental interests underlying the permitting requirement. As noted above, another approach would be to articulate the requirement in terms of actual interference. But permits must be obtained in advance. A forward-looking standard that focuses on a reasonable prediction that there will be — not just might be — actual interference adjusts for that consideration while not encompassing substantially more speech than necessary to meet the governmental interests underlying the permitting requirement. 16 Food Not Bombs does not independently challenge the “interfere” standard. Our understanding is that the Instruction uses “likely to interfere” as shorthand for “likely to impede, obstruct, impair, or interfere,” and that that litany, taken as a whole, applies only to activities that significantly alter the usual flow of traffic, making it difficult or impossible for citizens to reach their destinations without hindrance. 6684 SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA [17] We conclude that the Instruction provides an adequate limiting construction of SMMC § 4.68.040(a) as applied to sidewalks and park paths; but, with respect to all other city streets and public ways, SMMC § 4.68.040(a) is insufficiently narrowly tailored to withstand constitutional scrutiny. (ii) Food Not Bombs’ second narrow tailoring challenge concerns subsection (b) of SMMC § 4.68.040. This subsection applies to those events not subject to subsection (a) — that is, not occurring on streets, sidewalks, or public ways — which involve “one hundred fifty or more persons on City owned, controlled, or maintained property.” In public open spaces, unlike on streets and sidewalks, permit requirements serve not to promote traffic flow but only to regulate competing uses and provide notice to the municipality of the need for additional public safety and other services. Only for quite large groups are these interests implicated, so imposing permitting requirements is permissible only as to those groups. See Grossman, 33 F.3d at 1205-08 (finding permit requirement potentially applicable to groups as small as six to eight people insufficiently narrowly tailored); see also Douglas v. Brownell, 88 F.3d 1511, 1524 (8th Cir. 1996) (expressing doubt that application of a permit requirement to groups with as few as ten people is sufficiently narrowly tailored). [18] Groups of 150 or more, whether demonstrating or playing soccer, are by any measure sufficiently large enough to affect or “have an impact on” the use of Santa Monica’s public spaces by other citizens and therefore to implicate the City’s interest in maintaining the safe and compatible use of limited public open space. See Thomas, 534 U.S. at 322 (“[T]o allow unregulated access to all comers could easily reduce rather than enlarge the park’s utility as a forum for speech.” (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted)). We therefore hold that, standing alone, the subsection (b) permit requirement, applicable only to groups of 150 SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA 6685 or more, is narrowly tailored to Santa Monica’s governmental interest in allocating use of Santa Monica’s public open space among competing groups of citizens.17 [19] The related Instruction, however, fatally undermines this narrow tailoring by mandating that “any activity or event which the applicant intends to advertise in advance via radio, television and/or widely-distributed print media shall be deemed to be an activity or event of 150 or more persons.” Instruction at 5 (Section III(1)(b)). This provision does more than simply advise potential event organizers that when they advertise they cannot be sure of the number of attendees and that, if more than 149 people actually attend, they will be held to the permit requirement. Were it so drafted, the Instruction would simply implement the large group trigger, and its validity would not be in question. The “shall be deemed” language of the Instruction, however, precludes reading it as advisory. Instead, the language creates a per se rule, rendering any advertised event a qualifying one whether or not 150 or more people actually attend. As written, the Instruction detaches the Events Ordinance from the asserted interest of the City in allocating use of public open space by large groups.18 17 Whether 150 people is the outside 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. 18 We note that advertising an event in broadly available media is itself a form of expression protected by the First Amendment. See Metromedia, Inc. v. City of San Diego, 453 U.S. 490 (1981). To require a permit simply because an event is advertised is in effect to require a permit to advertise, based on the content of that advertisement. Whether this application of the Instruction runs afoul of the First Amendment for reasons independent of its impact on speech in public fora has not been raised by the parties, and we need not decide the question here. See Bolger v. Youngs Drug Prods. Corp., 463 U.S. 60, 65 (1983) (“With respect to noncommercial speech, this Court has sustained content-based restrictions only in the most extraordinary circumstances.”). 6686 SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA [20] We conclude that, as implemented by the Instruction, SMMC § 4.68.040(b) is not a narrowly tailored time, place, and manner restriction and cannot be enforced. Without the advertising trigger, however, SMMC § 4.68.040(b) passes constitutional muster. [21] (b) We next consider whether the two-day advance notice requirement applicable to Category 3 events, those events not encompassed within Categories 1 and 2, is narrowly tailored. As noted by the Seventh Circuit: [T]he length of the required period of advance notice is critical to its reasonableness; and given that the time required to consider an application will generally be shorter the smaller the planned demonstration and that political demonstrations are often engendered by topical events, a very long period of advance notice with no exception for spontaneous demonstrations unreasonably limits free speech. Church of the Am. Knights of the Ku Klux Klan v. City of Gary, 334 F.3d 676, 682 (7th Cir. 2003). Courts, including ours, have struck down a variety of advance notice requirements on the ground that the length of the required notice period was too long. See, e.g., City of Dearborn, 418 F.3d 606-07 (striking down a thirty-day advance notice requirement for events in parks, on streets, or in other public areas); City of Gary, 334 F.3d at 682-83 (striking down a forty-fiveday advance notice requirement for demonstrations on city streets or public property); Douglas, 88 F.3d at 1523-24 (striking down a five-day advance notice requirement for processions of ten or more persons on streets, sidewalks, and public ways on the grounds that it was unjustifiably long and applied to groups as small as ten); City of Richmond, 743 F.2d at 1356-57 (striking down a twenty-day advance notice requirement for parades). SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA 6687 [22] Conversely, ordinances requiring fewer than three days advance notice of large expressive events have survived challenge. See, e.g., A Quaker Action Group v. Morton, 516 F.2d 717, 735 (D.C. Cir. 1975) (approving a two-day advance notice requirement for planned public gatherings on a designated area on the grounds of the White House); Powe v. Miles, 407 F.2d 73, 84 (2d Cir. 1968) (upholding a two-day advance notice requirement); Local 32B-32J v. Port Auth. of N.Y. & N.J., 3 F. Supp. 2d 413, 417-22 (S.D.N.Y. 1998) (upholding a thirty-six-hour advance notice requirement for expressive activity in the World Trade Center and Port Authority Bus Terminal). Food Not Bombs offers two cases in support of its argument that the two-day advance application requirement is not narrowly tailored. Both cases — one from our circuit and one from the Seventh Circuit — involved substantially longer notice requirements than the requirements imposed by the Events Ordinance. In City of Richmond, we held that a twenty-day advance notice requirement was not the “least restrictive means” for protecting the city’s asserted interests. 743 F.2d at 1357.19 In so holding, however, we reviewed ordinances from other cities with significantly shorter advance notice requirements, suggesting that an ordinance with an advance notice requirement that was quite short could pass muster. See id. at 135657 (citing twenty-four-hour, thirty-six-hour, two-day, and three-day provisions).20 19 In Ward, decided after City of Richmond, the Supreme Court rejected the use of the least restrictive means analysis and reaffirmed that “the requirement of narrow tailoring is satisfied so long as the . . . regulation promotes a substantial government interest that would be achieved less effectively absent the regulation.” Ward, 491 U.S. at 798-99 (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). 20 At oral argument, counsel indicated that City of Richmond had served as the guidepost for the City’s two-day advance notice provision. 6688 SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA In City of Gary, our sister circuit struck down a forty-fiveday advance permit application requirement that applied to parades, rallies, or demonstrations of groups as small as fifty. 334 F.3d at 682-83. The court noted the “reasonableness in general of requiring that a permit to hold a demonstration on city streets be sought in advance of events” but found that the challenged ordinance suffered from two detectible infirmities: (1) it failed to incorporate the notion that the smaller the planned demonstration, the less time a city would need to process a permit application, and (2) it provided no exception for spontaneous demonstrations. Id. at 682. [23] These two cases, while disapproving of long advance notice provisions, do not lead us to question Santa Monica’s two-day requirement. The two-day period (seventy-two-hour period, if an applicant needs a permit from the Fire or Building and Safety Departments) accords with Santa Monica’s significant governmental interests by (1) providing a coordinated process for managing community events in heavily burdened and limited public space, and (2) ensuring that qualifying events, which often require the provision of public services, do not impede traffic on sidewalks and busy streets without the benefit of advance notice to the City. It does take some time to coordinate the various demands on the streets, sidewalks, and parks; assess what services (such as additional police) are needed; contact those services; ensure their availability; and allow those services to prepare for the events. Santa Monica’s requirement, while not the shortest possible, is nearly so. Given that a two-day advance permit requirement accords with the few advance permitting ordinances previously cited with approval by federal courts; that it includes an exemption for spontaneous events, discussed below; and that, on the present record, the notice requirements have not in practice constricted substantial amounts of spontaneous expression, we hold that the two-day notice, on its face, is sufficiently narrowly tailored. SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA 6689 Volume 2 of 2 6690 SANTA MONICA FOOD v. CITY OF SANTA MONICA Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California Manuel L. Real, District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted February 14, 2005—Pasadena, California Filed June 16, 2006 Before: Andrew J. Kleinfeld, Kim McLane Wardlaw, and Marsha S. Berzon, Circuit Judges.