Opinion ID: 538815
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Setting a Standard of Review

Text: 66 Conceived of as an individual, Due Process right to move freely about one's neighborhood, the right to travel is clearly burdened by the cruising ordinance. Plaintiffs' argument regarding an appropriate standard of review is simple--statutes that burden constitutionally protected rights survive only to the extent that they are no more restrictive than necessary to achieve compelling state interests. This basic formulation of the strict scrutiny test has been routinely applied in substantive due process cases 37 as well as in Shapiro and certain of its progeny. 67 Plaintiffs assert, convincingly, that the ordinance cannot survive strict scrutiny. Although York's asserted interests--ensuring public safety and reducing unwanted congestion, noise and pollution--are surely important, and can probably be deemed compelling, the tailoring of the ordinance would be problematic. As the plaintiffs point out, the city has offered no specific evidence why the ordinance must extend to weekday nights, or why its interests could not be vindicated by other less restrictive alternatives--for example, enforcing existing traffic laws, which among other things prohibit stopping during green lights, as cruisers evidently do, see App. at 52. Thus, were we to employ least restrictive analysis, as required by the traditional strict scrutiny test, we agree with the plaintiffs that the ordinance could not survive. 68 Not every governmental burden on fundamental rights must survive strict scrutiny, however. We believe that reviewing all infringements on the right to travel under strict scrutiny is just as inappropriate as applying no heightened scrutiny to any infringement on the right to travel not implicating the structural or federalism-based concerns of the more well-established precedents. For this conclusion, we rely heavily on the time, place and manner doctrine so firmly entrenched in the jurisprudence of free speech. 69 The doctrine allows intermediate scrutiny--not strict--of certain time, place and manner restrictions on speech. Thus, in regulating speech in traditional public fora, a state may impose content-neutral time, place and manner restrictions that are narrowly tailored to serve significant government interests--not necessarily compelling ones--while leaving open ample alternative channels of communication. See, e.g., Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288, 293-94, 104 S.Ct. 3065, 3068-69, 82 L.Ed.2d 221 (1984). Moreover, the tailoring requirement in this context does not require the state to employ the least restrictive means of achieving its end, as it would under full-blown strict scrutiny. See, e.g., Board of Trustees v. Fox, --- U.S. ----, 109 S.Ct. 3028, 3033, 106 L.Ed.2d 388 (1989). 70 The freedom of speech is expressly enumerated in the Bill of Rights itself, and the Court, citing the transcendent value to all society of constitutionally protected expression, 38 often creates for it especially protective doctrines that could be--but are not--applied to protected rights generally. 39 Nonetheless, the time, place and manner doctrine allows certain restrictions on speech to survive under less than fully strict scrutiny. If the freedom of speech itself can be so qualified, then surely the unenumerated right of localized travel can be as well. 71 The concerns underlying York's cruising ordinance seem to us highly analogous to the concerns that drive the time, place and manner doctrine: just as the right to speak cannot conceivably imply the right to speak whenever, wherever and however one pleases--even in public fora specifically used for public speech--so too the right to travel cannot conceivably imply the right to travel whenever, wherever and however one pleases--even on roads specifically designed for public travel. Unlimited access to public fora or roadways would result not in maximizing individuals' opportunity to engage in protected activity, but chaos. To prevent that, state and local governments must enjoy some degree of flexibility to regulate access to, and use of, the publicly held instrumentalities of speech and travel. Therefore, in order to set out a workable jurisprudence for the newly recognized due process right of localized movement on the public roadways, we find it appropriate to borrow from the well-settled, highly analogous rules the Court has developed in the free speech context. The cruising ordinance will be subjected to intermediate scrutiny, and will be upheld if it is narrowly tailored to meet significant city objectives. 40 We now apply this standard to the ordinance. 41