Opinion ID: 1408111
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Evaluating the Limits of the Preliminary Injunction

Text: Having concluded that provisions (a) and (k) of the preliminary injunction are not unconstitutionally vague or overbroad and do not infringe defendants' constitutionally protected associational interests, we must complete our inquiry by considering the limitations on the scope of the interlocutory decree as a matter of both public nuisance and constitutional law. We must ask, in other words, two questions: First, whether the activity enjoined under these two provisions reasonably falls within the statutory definition of a public nuisance as construed in People v. Lim, supra, 18 Cal.2d 872, 878, and second, whether the two provisions comply with the constitutional standard announced by the Supreme Court in Madsen, supra, 512 U.S. 753, that is, whether they burden no more speech than necessary to serve a significant governmental interest. ( Id. at p. 765 [114 S.Ct. at p. 2525].) (15) That the conduct enjoined by the trial court meets the statutory definition of a public nuisance is clear from the account of conditions in Rocksprings recited at the outset of this opinion. To constitute a public nuisance under our Civil Code, conduct must be injurious to health, ... indecent or offensive to the senses, ... an obstruction to the free use of property, so as to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property, or unlawfully obstruct[] free passage or use, in the customary manner, of any ... public park, square, street, or highway. (Civ. Code, § 3479.) In addition, the conduct must affect an entire community or neighborhood, or any considerable number of persons. (Civ. Code, § 3480.) The many declarations filed with the superior court by the City in support of its request for injunctive relief meet these criteria. Gang members not only routinely obstruct Rocksprings residents' use of their own property  by such activities as dealing drugs from apartment houses, lawns, carports, and even residents' automobiles  but habitually obstruct the free passage or use, in the customary manner, of the public streets of Rocksprings. It is likewise clear from this record that the conduct of gang members qualifies as indecent or offensive to the senses of reasonable area residents: The hooligan-like atmosphere that prevails night and day in Rocksprings  the drinking, consumption of illegal drugs, loud talk, loud music, vulgarity, profanity, brutality, fistfights and gunfire  easily meet the statutory standard. Nor is it difficult to see how threats of violence to individual residents and families in Rocksprings, murder, attempted murder, drive-by shootings, assault and battery, vandalism, arson and associated crimes obstruct the free use of property and interfere with the enjoyment of life of an entire community. Do provisions (a) and (k) of the superior court's preliminary injunction meet the constitutional test formulated by the Supreme Court in Madsen, supra, 512 U.S. 753, 765 [114 S.Ct. 2516, 2525] by burden[ing] no more speech than necessary to serve an important governmental interest? We conclude both provisions satisfy the constitutional test. (16) As noted, provision (a) effectively forbids gang members from engaging in any form of social intercourse with anyone known to them to be a gang member anywhere in public view within the four-block area of Rocksprings. The provision's ban on all forms of association  standing, sitting, walking, driving, gathering or appearing anywhere in public view  does not violate the Madsen standard merely because of its breadth. The provision seeks to ensure that, within the circumscribed area of Rocksprings, gang members have no opportunity to combine. It is the threat of collective conduct by gang members loitering in a specific and narrowly described neighborhood that the provision is sensibly intended to forestall. Given that overriding purpose, the prohibitions enumerated in provision (a) are not easily divisible. Permitting two or more gang members to drive together but not sit, or to stand together but not walk, would obviously defeat the core purpose behind the proscription. Moreover, given the factual showing made by the City in support of preliminary relief  the carnival-like atmosphere of collective mayhem described above (see, ante, at pp. 1100-1101, 1120)  we cannot say that the ban on any association between gang members within the neighborhood goes beyond what is required to abate the nuisance. The effect of provision (a)'s ban on defendants' protected speech is minimal. To judge from the evidence placed before the superior court, the gangs appear to have had no constitutionally protected or even lawful goals within the limited territory of Rocksprings. So far as the record before the trial court shows, the gangs and their members engaged in no expressive or speech-related activities which were not either criminally or civilly unlawful or inextricably intertwined with unlawful conduct. According to the declaration of Officer Mikael Niehoff, an eight-year veteran of the San Jose Police Department: Illegal drug dealing by Sureno gang members, including VSL/VST, is a common practice, and the gang entity provides protection to the individual members, allowing them to establish areas where they can conduct their illegal activities. The protective shield of the gang has allowed individual members to commit crimes such as narcotic trafficking that result in personal gain. These crimes are committed in association with the gang because of the protection offered to the members by virtue of their gang affiliation. In the Rocksprings area, the fact that numerous narcotics transactions occurred is a direct result of the protective shield provided by VSL/VST. Individuals who claimed membership in VSL or VST were at liberty to deal drugs in a veritable `safe' zone. Does provision (a)'s prohibition on a gang member associating with even a single fellow gang member within Rocksprings transgress the test of Madsen, supra, 512 U.S. 753? Could not the restriction be limited to barring associations between, say, three other gang members? Two gang members? On such a highly particular question, we are compelled to defer to the superior knowledge of the trial judge, who is in a better position than we to determine what conditions on the ground in Rocksprings will reasonably permit. Outside the perimeter of Rocksprings, the superior court's writ does not run; gang members are subject to no special restrictions that do not affect the general population. Given the limited area within which the superior court's injunction operates, the absence of any showing of constitutionally protected activity by gang members within that area, the aggravated nature of gang misconduct, the fact that even within Rocksprings gang members may associate freely out of public view, and the kind of narrow yet irreducible arbitrariness that inheres in such line-drawing, we conclude that this aspect of provision (a) passes muster as well under the standard of Madsen, supra, 512 U.S. 753. (17) We reach a similar resolution with respect to provision (k). That provision forbids those subject to the injunction from confronting, intimidating or similarly challenging  including assaulting and battering  residents of Rocksprings, or any other persons who gang members know have complained about their conduct within the neighborhood. It has long been the rule, of course, that physical violence and the threat of violence are not constitutionally protected: The First Amendment does not protect violence. ( NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. (1982) 458 U.S. 886, 916 [102 S.Ct. 3409, 3427, 73 L.Ed.2d 1215] (hereafter Claiborne Hardware ).) Because the conduct proscribed by provision (k) consists of threats of violence and violent acts themselves, it fall[s] outside the protection of the First Amendment because [such acts] coerce by unlawful conduct, rather than persuade by expression, and thus play no part in the `marketplace of ideas.' As such, they are punishable because of the state's interest in protecting individuals from the fear of violence, the disruption fear engenders and the possibility the threatened violence will occur. ( In re M.S., supra, 10 Cal.4th 698, 714, original italics.) [A] physical assault is not by any stretch of the imagination expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment. ( Wisconsin v. Mitchell, supra, 508 U.S. 476, 484 [113 S.Ct. 2194, 2199].) By the same token, utterance in a context of violence can lose its significance as an appeal to reason and become part of an instrument of force. Such utterance was not meant to be sheltered by the Constitution. ( Drivers Union v. Meadowmoor Co. (1941) 312 U.S. 287, 293 [61 S.Ct. 552, 555, 85 L.Ed. 836, 132 A.L.R. 1200].)
(18) Defendants contend that they may not be bound by the injunction except on proof that each possessed a specific intent to further an unlawful aim embraced by [the gang]. The quoted language is the test formulated by the United States Supreme Court in Claiborne Hardware, supra, 458 U.S. at page 925 [102 S.Ct. at page 3432], as being required to sustain damages liability against individual members of a group. Claiborne Hardware is distinguishable on its facts. Defendants there were members of a local chapter of a national civil rights organization. Each was held liable in state court proceedings for business losses suffered by the plaintiff merchants over the seven-year duration of a civil rights boycott sponsored by the organization. Although the boycott was for the most part peaceable and law abiding, there were sporadic incidents of violence by some members, resulting in economic losses to the plaintiffs. Vacating the state court damages award, the high court held that mere association with [the] group  absent a specific intent to further an unlawful aim embraced by that group  is an insufficient predicate for liability. ( Claiborne Hardware, supra, 458 U.S. at pp. 925-926 [102 S.Ct. at p. 3432].) The state courts, the Supreme Court reasoned, had relied on isolated acts of violence during a limited period to uphold [plaintiffs'] recovery of all business losses sustained over a 7-year span.... The court's judgment `screens reality' and cannot stand. ( Id. at p. 924 [102 S.Ct. at p. 3431], italics and fns. omitted.) Unlike the record in Claiborne Hardware, supra, 458 U.S. 886, the evidence submitted by the City in support of the preliminary injunction here presents a portrait of gang affiliated youths whose collective activities, within the four-block area of Rocksprings, create and sustain the urban war zone described at the outset of this opinion. The precedents that control the reach of injunctive relief in such circumstances are Drivers Union v. Meadowmoor Co., supra, 312 U.S. 287, and Madsen, supra, 512 U.S. 753. In Drivers Union v. Meadowmoor Co., supra, 312 U.S. 287, 291 [61 S.Ct. 552, 554] (hereafter Drivers Union ), the trial court issued a preliminary injunction restraining all union conduct, violent and peaceful, arising out of a labor dispute. The union protested, arguing the decree violated the First Amendment rights of its members by enjoining acts of peaceful picketing. The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the broad scope of the interlocutory decree and directed that a permanent injunction, restraining peaceful as well as violent acts by union members, be entered as well. The United States Supreme Court upheld the injunction, framing the case as one where the question ... is whether a state can choose to authorize its courts to enjoin acts of picketing in themselves peaceful when they are enmeshed with contemporaneously violent conduct which is concededly outlawed. ( Id. at p. 292 [61 S.Ct. at p. 554].) As in Drivers Union, supra, 312 U.S. 287, here the injunction is confined, encompassing conduct occurring within a narrow, four-block residential neighborhood. As in Drivers Union, it deals with this narrow area precisely because the coercive conduct affected it. An injunction so adjusted to a particular situation is in accord with the settled practice of equity ... [and] ... must be read in the context of its circumstances. ( Id. at p. 298 [61 S.Ct. at p. 557].) As in Drivers Union, the high court in Madsen, supra, 512 U.S. 753, 759-760 [114 S.Ct. 2516, 2522], upheld an injunction directed against congregating, picketing, patrolling, demonstrating or entering within 36 feet of a health clinic in which therapeutic abortions were performed. That provision of the decree, along with another setting restrictions on noise, was directed not only at the anti-abortion organizations themselves, but at allied organizations and  their officers, agents, members, employees and servants, and ... all persons acting in concert or participation with them, or on their behalf. ( Id. at p. 759, fn. 1 [114 S.Ct. at p. 2521] italics added.) Both Drivers Union, supra, 312 U.S. 287, and Madsen, supra, 512 U.S. 753, thus stand for the proposition that, in a proper case, an organization and its individual members are enjoinable without meeting the specific intent to further unlawful group aims standard applied in Claiborne Hardware, supra, 458 U.S. 886. Certainly that proposition comprehends paragraphs (a) and (k) of the preliminary injunction, the only two provisions now before us. For we have already concluded that the conduct proscribed by those two provisions  appearing publicly in Rocksprings with others known to a defendant to be gang members, and harassing area residents known to a defendant to have complained to public authorities about gang activities in Rocksprings  are activities integral to the public nuisance that afflicts Rocksprings and do not implicate protected First Amendment conduct. (See Claiborne Hardware, supra, at pp. 918-920 [102 S.Ct. at pp. 3428-3429].) That being the case, the interim relief entered by the superior court is indistinguishable from time-honored equitable practice applicable to labor unions, abortion protesters or other identifiable groups. Because such groups can act only through the medium of their membership, ... it has been a common practice to make the injunction run also to classes of persons through whom the enjoined person may act, such as agents, servants, employees, aiders [and] abettors.... ( Berger v. Superior Court (1917) 175 Cal. 719, 721 [167 P. 143, 15 A.L.R. 373]; see also In re Lennon (1897) 166 U.S. 548, 554 [17 S.Ct. 658, 660, 41 L.Ed. 1110] [To render a person amenable to an injunction it is neither necessary that he should have been a party to the suit in which the injunction was issued, nor to have been actually served with a copy of it, so long as he appears to have had actual notice.]; cf. Fed. Rules Civ. Proc., rule 65(d), 28 U.S.C. [injunction is binding only upon the parties to the action, their officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, and upon those persons in active concert or participation with them who receive actual notice of the order by personal service or otherwise].) We see nothing in this case  where instead of naming the gang organizations themselves as parties, the City named as individual defendants all 38 gang members it was able to identify  that removes it from the usual rule applied in Berger v. Superior Court, supra, 175 Cal. 719, and many other cases. The City's evidence in support of preliminary equitable relief demonstrated that it was the gang itself, acting through its membership, that was responsible for creating and maintaining the public nuisance in Rocksprings. Because the City could have named the gangs themselves as defendants and proceeded against them, its decision to name individual gang members instead does not take the case out of the familiar rule that both the organization and the members through which it acts are subject to injunctive relief. For present purposes, it is enough to observe that there was sufficient evidence before the superior court to support the conclusions that the gang and its members present in Rocksprings were responsible for the public nuisance, that each of the individual defendants either admitted gang membership or was identified as a gang member, and that each was observed by police officials in the Rocksprings neighborhood. Although all but three of the eleven defendants who chose to contest entry of the preliminary injunction  Miguel Moreno, Rafael Ruiz, and Blanca Gonzalez  were shown to have committed acts, primarily drug related, comprising specific elements of the public nuisance, such individualized proof is not a condition to the entry of preliminary relief based on a showing that it is the gang, acting through its individual members, that is responsible for the conditions prevailing in Rocksprings. Additional proceedings will be required to enforce the specific terms of the preliminary injunction. Should contempt proceedings ensue, each individual defendant will have an opportunity to contest any claim by the City that he or she has violated specific terms of the preliminary injunction.