Opinion ID: 146453
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Facial and As-Applied Vagueness Challenges

Text: Facial challenges are generally disfavored. See, e.g., Wash. State Grange v. Wash. State Republican Party, 552 U.S. 442, 450, 128 S.Ct. 1184, 170 L.Ed.2d 151 (2008) (recognizing that courts should [e]xercis[e] judicial restraint in a facial challenge); Farrell v. Burke, 449 F.3d 470, 494 (2d Cir.2006) (Federal courts as a general rule allow litigants to assert only their own legal rights and interests, and not the legal rights and interests of third parties.). There are several rationales for limiting such third-party, or jus tertii, standing. First, doing so serves institutional interests by ensuring that the issues before the court are concrete and sharply presented. Thibodeau v. Portuondo, 486 F.3d 61, 71 (2d Cir.2007) (internal quotation marks omitted). Second, [c]laims of facial invalidity often rest on speculation. Wash. State Grange, 552 U.S. at 450, 128 S.Ct. 1184. Third, facial challenges run contrary to the fundamental principle of judicial restraint that courts should neither anticipate a question of constitutional law in advance of the necessity of deciding it nor formulate a rule of constitutional law broader than is required by the precise facts to which it is to be applied. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Fourth, facial challenges threaten to short circuit the democratic process by preventing laws embodying the will of the people from being implemented in a manner consistent with the Constitution. Id. at 451, 128 S.Ct. 1184. Despite courts' baseline aversion to facial challenges, the limitations on third-party standing that restrict such challenges are prudential, not jurisdictional. Courts are therefore permitted to recognize such standing and allow facial challenges in some cases. They have done so from time to time, particularlyand perhaps onlywhen the claims are based on the assertion of a First Amendment right. See Farrell, 449 F.3d at 495 n. 11. [8] In such cases, the plaintiff is allowed to challenge a law that may be legitimately applied to his or her own expressive conduct if the law has the potential to infringe unconstitutionally on the expressive conduct of others. See, e.g., Forsyth County, Ga. v. Nationalist Movement, 505 U.S. 123, 129, 112 S.Ct. 2395, 120 L.Ed.2d 101 (1992) (It is well established that in the area of freedom of expression an overbroad regulation may be subject to facial review and invalidation, even though its application in the case under consideration may be constitutionally unobjectionable.). The rationale for permitting a facial challenge, in the rare case where one is permissible, is that the very existence of some broadly written laws has the potential to chill the expressive activity of others not before the court. Id. The potential for such a deterrent effect outweighs the prudential considerations that ordinarily militate against third-party standing. [T]o require that the harm of chilling effect actually be suffered by the plaintiff would destroy the whole purpose of the concept, which is to enable even those who have not been chilled to vindicate the First Amendment interests of those who have . . . [and to] permit[] a person, who has standing to challenge governmental action because of the concrete harm it causes him, to assert a deficiency which may not affect him but only others. United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. v. Reagan, 738 F.2d 1375, 1379 (D.C.Cir. 1984). In order to decide whether the plaintiffs in this case can mount a facial challenge, then, the threshold question is whether their claim properly can be understood as arising under the First Amendment.