Opinion ID: 792262
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Gilles' Arrest

Text: 51 The essence of the majority opinion is that, though defendants may have violated Gilles' First Amendment rights, the law was not so clearly established as to deprive the officers of qualified immunity. I disagree because I believe that the officers violated long-standing, fundamental principles of First Amendment law. 52 To qualify as fighting words, speech must either be intended and likely to incite violence, or inherently likely to result in physical fighting. See Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 20, 91 S.Ct. 1780, 29 L.Ed.2d 284 (1971) (There is ... no showing that anyone who saw Cohen was in fact violently aroused or that appellant intended such a result.); Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 409, 109 S.Ct. 2533, 105 L.Ed.2d 342 (1989) (asking whether the expression is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action) (internal quotation omitted); Johnson v. Campbell, 332 F.3d 199, 213 (3d Cir.2003) (Johnson's words were unpleasant, insulting, and possibly unwise, but they were not intended to, nor did they, cause a fight.). 16 53 Here there is no indication, and certainly no showing, that Gilles acted with the intention of provoking violence. Therefore, we must consider whether the speech was by its nature very likely to result in physical fighting. Defendants argue that the crowd which had gathered before Gilles was on the verge of riot when police officers arrived. I do not discern, from what little we can observe on the videotape on record, that the crowd was on the verge of riot. As the state court, which granted a writ of habeas corpus to Gilles, noted, many listeners reacted to Gilles' speech by being quietly attentive or simply laughing at the proceedings. Besides Gilles himself, the only noise comes from individuals in the crowd shouting at Gilles and engaging in various heated exchanges with him. The crowd occasionally broke out into applause in their support. 54 In the videotape, Gilles stands near a tree at a pedestrian intersection on a campus green. The only other people one can see for most of the tape are those passing by him on the pedestrian walkway. The crowd listening and engaging Gilles is some distance away from him, as there is considerable empty space visible around Gilles. As the majority describes the scene, at one point, one individual approached Gilles to confront him, but that individual remained only briefly. Gilles called him cigarette-breath as he walked away. As the majority notes, the records suggests that at some point someone also threw an apple that hit Gilles' briefcase, but this event is hardly noticeable on the tape and was hardly an act of physical intimidation. 55 The record does suggest that the police were told that the situation was near riot and that a fight might break out. However, I think it is clear that no fight was actually likely to break out. The students were certainly angry with Gilles and wanted him off their campus, but there is no indication that they intended to force him off of the campus physically. 56 The police defendants were probably concerned upon arriving at the scene that angry people were shouting at each other and engaging in some name-calling. But the First Amendment recognizes ... that a certain amount of expressive disorder not only is inevitable in a society committed to individual freedom, but must itself be protected if that freedom would survive. City of Houston v. Hill, 482 U.S. 451, 472, 107 S.Ct. 2502, 96 L.Ed.2d 398 (1987). While [t]o many, the immediate consequence of this freedom may often appear to be only verbal tumult, discord, and even offensive utterance[, t]hese are ... in truth necessary side effects of the broader enduring values which the process of open debate permits us to achieve. Cohen, 403 U.S. at 24-25, 91 S.Ct. 1780. 57 Indeed, in this case, Gilles provoked exactly the response desirable in a democracy: students responded to him by engaging in argument regarding important issues of religious and sexual tolerance and personal privacy. 58 Defendants argue that however benign the crowd's behavior up until the time that Gilles was arrested, his language was so provocative that it was reasonable to assume that at some point violence would break out. It is very difficult to show, however, that words are inherently likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest. Hill, 482 U.S. at 461, 107 S.Ct. 2502 (quoting Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 4, 69 S.Ct. 894, 93 L.Ed. 1131 (1949)); see also Street v. New York, 394 U.S. 576, 592, 89 S.Ct. 1354, 22 L.Ed.2d 572 (1969) (Though it is conceivable that some listeners might have been moved to retaliate upon hearing appellant's disrespectful words, we cannot say that appellant's remarks were so inherently inflammatory as to come within the small class of `fighting words' which are likely to provoke the average person to retaliation.) (internal quotation omitted). 59 The Supreme Court has long rejected the presumption that an audience that takes serious offense at particular expression is necessarily likely to disturb the peace and that the expression may be prohibited on this basis.... On the contrary ... a principal function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. at 408-09, 109 S.Ct. 2533 (internal quotation omitted). The Court has explicitly held that it will not permit[] the government to assume that every expression of a provocative idea will incite a riot, but [has] instead required careful consideration of the actual circumstances surrounding such expression. Id. at 409, 109 S.Ct. 2533. The government in this case was not justified in presuming that university students, whose peculiar vocation it is to engage in free and open debate, are standing ready to strike out physically at whomever may assault their sensibilities so as to effectively censor dissidents. Cohen, 403 U.S. at 23, 91 S.Ct. 1780. As the Cohen court explained: 60 [While] [t]here may be some persons about with such lawless and violent proclivities ... that is an insufficient base upon which to erect, consistently with constitutional values, a governmental power to force persons who wish to ventilate their dissident views into avoiding particular forms of expression. The argument amounts to little more than the self-defeating proposition that to avoid physical censorship of one who has not sought to provide such a response by a hypothetical coterie of the violent and the lawless, the States may more appropriately effectuate that censorship themselves. 61 Id. at 23, 91 S.Ct. 1780. 62 The force of the defendant's attempt to characterize Gilles' speech as fighting words derives almost entirely from the offensive character of his speech. Cf. Street, 394 U.S. at 592, 89 S.Ct. 1354 ([A]ny shock effect of appellant's speech must be attributed to the content of the ideas expressed. It is firmly settled that under our Constitution the public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers.). Yet Ku Klux Klan members and neo-Nazis are permitted to march, notwithstanding the offense they cause to the vast majority of people. See Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. at 418, 109 S.Ct. 2533 (The First Amendment does not guarantee that ... concepts virtually sacred to our Nation as a whole... will go unquestioned in the marketplace of ideas.) (citing Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 89 S.Ct. 1827, 23 L.Ed.2d 430 (1969)). [W]e are often captives outsides the sanctuary of the home and subject to objectionable speech. Cohen, 403 U.S. at 21, 91 S.Ct. 1780 (quotation omitted). People who do not want exposure to the offensive speech can avert their eyes or walk away. Id. at 21, 91 S.Ct. 1780. If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable. Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. at 414, 109 S.Ct. 2533. Neither embarrassing, disgraceful, shaming, vulgar nor offensive words are inherently fighting words. See Lewis v. City of New Orleans, 415 U.S. 130, 133-34, 94 S.Ct. 970, 39 L.Ed.2d 214 (1974); NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. 886, 910, 911, 102 S.Ct. 3409, 73 L.Ed.2d 1215 (1982); Gooding, 405 U.S. at 527, 92 S.Ct. 1103; Campbell, 332 F.3d at 212. 63 The majority suggests that at least those insults that Gilles directed at a woman who identified herself as Christian and lesbian were fighting words. Gilles taunted the woman: oh, my, you ma'am are most confused. She thinks she's a Christian lesbo. She's a lesbian for Jesus. He asked her, do you lay down with dogs? Are you a bestiality lover? ... Can you be a bestiality lover and a Christian also? 64 The government's constitutional authority to shut off discourse solely to protect others from hearing it is ... dependent upon a showing that substantial privacy interests are being invaded in an essentially intolerable manner. Cohen, 403 U.S. at 21, 91 S.Ct. 1780. Although outrageous and offensive, Gilles' comments to this woman were made in the context of a speech in which he alleged that most Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) students were going to hell for their sexual degeneracy. The students he called out specifically, including the woman who identified herself as a Christian lesbian, were among those who chose to shout back at Gilles and engage him. Gilles clearly had no independent knowledge of any of these students, such that they could feel he was revealing actual information about their private lives. Gilles was clearly using them as mere examples of his larger point about campus sexual mores. 65 Because Gilles was not directing his comments to individuals in any meaningful sense, they are especially difficult to characterize as fighting words. Fighting words are directed to the person of the hearer. Cohen, 403 U.S. at 20, 91 S.Ct. 1780 (quotation omitted); see also Hess v. Indiana, 414 U.S. 105, 107-08, 94 S.Ct. 326, 38 L.Ed.2d 303 (1973); Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. at 409, 109 S.Ct. 2533. While in this case, several of Gilles' comments were ostensibly directed toward particular individuals in the course of exchanges initiated by them, the alleged personal insults were always delivered from a considerable physical distance and in the course of a sweeping sermon on sexual immorality. 66 Gilles' speech was provocative because of its content rather than because it contained words to which we would expect university students to react reflexively with violence. Nor were his words directed to individuals under circumstances that would lead the police to conclude that those individuals were likely to fight back physically. Because his speech was unlikely to result in violence, it clearly did not constitute fighting words. A reasonable officer would know that it fell outside the statutory prohibition against disorderly conduct.
67 Notwithstanding the long line of Supreme Court cases cited above, the majority concludes that the officers were not on notice that Gilles' speech was constitutionally protected. To assess a qualified immunity claim, this Court must examine not only the law that was clearly established at the time of the alleged violation but also the facts available to the official at that time. Paff v. Kaltenbach, 204 F.3d 425, 431 (3d Cir.2000). Contrary to the majority's view, I believe the facts available to the officers at the time that they arrested Gilles and Petit were sufficient to put them on notice of plaintiffs' rights. 68 Admittedly, when officers Davis and Goemmer arrived at the scene they had to rely on their observations and the reports of witnesses. The incident report suggests that most officers' assessment of the situation was based primarily on the initial report of a possible fight and their observation of Gilles shouting inflammatory language at the crowd. As explained above, the officers could not infer the prospect of violence from the content of Gilles' speech alone. Nor was it reasonable to rely on the initial report of a possible fight even after arriving at the scene and observing a purely verbal engagement. Although Officer Davis reports that he asked members of the crowd what was happening and spoke to one witness who identified herself as someone specifically affected by Gilles' remarks, the short time that passed between the officers' arrival at the scene and their arrest of Gilles suggests this questioning could not have been thorough. Moreover, the officers should have known that the only language remotely approaching fighting words was unlikely to result in lawlessness because those who allegedly had been attacked volunteered for an interview with the officers. Having just identified themselves to the police, these individuals were unlikely to strike out at Gilles in the officers' presence. In these circumstances, the officers acted too quickly in arresting Gilles shortly after they arrived at the scene. Nothing they saw or heard in that brief time justified his arrest. 69 Even if the officers had a reasonable basis for believing that a breach of the peace might eventually occur, their concern could not justify a quick arrest. If the officers were worried that one or more students might physically assault Gilles, the appropriate response would have been to stand guard to ensure that no violence erupted. Their mere presence should have been enough to deter a breach of the peace. It was not reasonable for the officers instead to ask Gilles for a permit he did not need and then to arrest him.