Opinion ID: 71212
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Does the Injunction Purport to Bind the World at Large?

Text: 27 McKusick argues that no court can issue an injunction that binds the world at large, and that a speech-based injunction that attempts to bind nonparties creates an unconstitutional restraint on speech. That may or may not be true. 5 However, it is irrelevant in this case, because the injunction at issue does not attempt to bind the world at large. McKusick's argument that it does is based primarily on the following language: 28 ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that any City of Melbourne police officer or other person authorized to serve process may serve a copy of this order on any individual who may not have otherwise received notice of the order. Such officer may read the operative prohibitory language of this order to any individual who is without notice of this order, and such service or oral notice shall subject the person so served or noticed to the sanctions provided for herein for failure to comply herewith. 29 McKusick argues that Judge McGregor's transcursion of judicial authority was at once complete when he extended the scope of the injunction to 'any individual.'  The City responds that McKusick errs in attempting to isolate the challenged provision from the rest of the injunction because fundamental rules of construction ... require that a legal instrument be examined in its entirety. The City argues that, although the injunction authorizes police officers to read the injunction's prohibitory language to any individual, that prohibitory language, by its own terms, only applies to named parties and those acting in concert with them. 30 In our view, McKusick's interpretation of the injunction is foreclosed by the Supreme Court's interpretation of this same injunction in Madsen. In that decision, the Supreme Court based its holding that the injunction is content-neutral on the fact that the injunction is targeted at a particular group--the named parties and those acting in concert with them--whose activities had become disruptive. In explaining its holding on content-neutrality, the Supreme Court stated: 31 We begin by addressing petitioners' contention that the state court's order, because it is an injunction that restricts only the speech of antiabortion protesters, is necessarily content or viewpoint based.... To accept petitioners' claim would be to classify virtually every injunction as content or viewpoint based. An injunction, by its very nature, applies only to a particular group (or individuals) and regulates the activities, and perhaps the speech, of that group. It does so, however, because of the group's past actions in the context of a specific dispute between real parties.... [T]he court hearing the action is charged with fashioning a remedy for a specific deprivation, not with the drafting of a statute addressed to the general public. 32 Madsen, 512 U.S. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2523 (emphasis added). That explanation makes it clear that the Supreme Court did not give the injunction the interpretation that McKusick now urges. If it had done so, the Court could not have reached the conclusion that the injunction is content-neutral. Stated somewhat differently, if the Supreme Court had interpreted the injunction as an order against the world to refrain from speech activities expressing a particular viewpoint--specifically, an antiabortion viewpoint--within the 36-foot buffer zone, it almost certainly would not have concluded that the injunction is content-neutral. 33 That the majority in Madsen viewed the injunction as being targeted at a narrowly defined group of persons, instead of at the world at large, is underscored by the separate concurring opinions of Justices Souter and Stevens. Justice Souter emphasized that the trial judge who issued the injunction made reasonably clear that the issue of who was acting 'in concert' with the named defendants was a matter to be taken up in individual cases, and not to be decided on the basis of protesters' viewpoints. Id. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2530 (Souter, J., concurring). Similarly, Justice Stevens stressed: 34 [While] legislation is imposed on an entire community, ... injunctions apply solely to an individual or a limited group of individuals.... Given this distinction, a statute prohibiting demonstrations within 36 feet of an abortion clinic would probably violate the First Amendment, but an injunction directed at a limited group of persons who have engaged in unlawful conduct in a similar zone might well be constitutional. 35 Id. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2531 (Stevens, J., concurring). 36 McKusick asks this Court to reinterpret the injunction, contrary to the way the Supreme Court has interpreted it, and then to declare the injunction, as reinterpreted, unconstitutional. Of course, we cannot do that. Because the injunction, as construed by the Supreme Court, does not bind the world at large, the injunction cannot be unconstitutional on grounds that it does. Questions about the constitutionality of an injunction against the world at large are academic insofar as this injunction is concerned. 37