Opinion ID: 2091872
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Whittington's Constitutional Claims

Text: Reviewing the constitutionality of an application of the disorderly conduct statute requires a two-step inquiry. First, a reviewing court must determine whether state action has restricted a claimant's expressive activity. Second, if it has, the court must decide whether the restricted activity constituted an abuse of the right to speak.
To challenge state action as violating the right to speak, a claimant must first demonstrate that the state action has, in the concrete circumstances of the case, restricted his or her opportunity to engage in expressive activity. This inquiry is governed by our Bill of Rights' free expression clause, which provides that [n]o law shall be passed... restricting the right to speak, write, or print, freely, on any subject whatever. Ind. Const. art. 1, § 9. [2] That clause contemplates a broad notion of expressive activity. First, it extends to any subject whatever, and thus it is difficult to imagine a topic it does not cover. [3] Second, because the right to speak clause also provides that expressive activity may be freely performed, the clause reaches every conceivable mode of expression. We conclude that speaking, writing, or printing, freely, on any subject whatever, includes, at least, the projection of any words in any manner. Of course, the trigger of the right to speak clause is the notion of restriction. In construing that important concept, we resist the siren song of First Amendment jurisprudence. [4] The right to speak clause articulates a liberty interest, not an equality interest. It protects against restriction of expressive activity, not discrimination because of content or viewpoint. The right to speak clause focuses on the restrictive impact of state action on an individual's expressive activity. [5] At a minimum, the clause is implicated when the state imposes a direct and significant burden on a person's opportunity to speak his or her mind, in whatever manner the speaker deems most appropriate.
The right to speak is qualified, of course, by § 9's responsibility clause, which provides that for the abuse of that right, every person shall be responsible. Ind. Const. art. 1, § 9. The responsibility clause expressly recognizes the state's prerogative to punish expressive activity that constitutes an abuse of the right to speak. In Price, we defined abuse in light of the political philosophy that informs the Indiana Constitution. 622 N.E.2d at 958-59; see Patrick Baude, Has The Indiana Constitution Found Its Epic?, 69 Ind.L.J. 849 (1994). Under that philosophy, individuals possess inalienable freedom to do as they will, but they have collectively delegated to government a quantum of that freedom in order to advance everyone's peace, safety, and well-being. Ind. Const. art. 1, § 1; see In re Lawrance, 579 N.E.2d 32, 39 n. 3 (Ind.1991). The purpose of state power, then, is to foster an atmosphere in which individuals can fully enjoy that measure of freedom they have not delegated to government. Applying this philosophy in Price, we construed abuse as any expressive activity that injures the retained rights of individuals or undermines the State's efforts to facilitate their enjoyment. 622 N.E.2d at 959; see also State v. Marshall, 859 S.W.2d 289, 293-94 (Tenn.1993) (quoting 4 William Blackstone, Commentaries  151-52; in defining abuse under Tennessee's parallel provision as any expression that legislature could reasonably find destructive of the ends of society). In other words, expressive activity constitutes abuse if, notwithstanding § 9, it is punishable within the strictures of the police power, as that power is generally delineated in the personal liberty clause, Ind. Const. art. 1, § 1. [6] In Price, we made clear that in reviewing the state's determination that expression is an abuse, we will typically require only that [the conclusion] be rational. 622 N.E.2d at 959. It is true that the propriety of an exercise of the police power is a judicial question. State v. Gerhardt, 145 Ind. 439, 451, 44 N.E. 469 (1896). Nevertheless, we must accord considerable deference to the judgment of the legislature, inasmuch as the decision as to what constitutes a public purpose is first and foremost a legislative one. Cf. Collins v. Day, 644 N.E.2d 72, 80 (Ind.1994). We have limited ourselves to the narrow role of determining whether challenged state action has some reasonable relation to [7] or tendency to promote [8] the state's legitimate interests. Thus, if a claimant demonstrates that the right to speak clause is implicated, he or she retains the burden of proving that the State could not reasonably conclude that the restricted expression was an abuse.
One way a claimant can try to meet this burden is to show that his or her expressive activity was political. If a claimant succeeds in that attempt, the State must demonstrate that its action has not materially burdened the claimant's opportunity to engage in political expression. See Price, 622 N.E.2d at 963-64. This approach reflects our recognition that political expression is often beyond the scope of the delegated police power. In Price we reviewed the history of constitutional development in Indiana and concluded that implicit in the evolving protection for expression under the Indiana Bill of Rights is the idea that political expression is generally consistent with the goals of the police power. 622 N.E.2d at 961-63. Indeed, most political expression ultimately serves everyone's interests in peace, safety, and well-being. See id. at 962. Consequently, we held that pure [9] political expression cannot be said to constitute an abuse within the police power unless it inflicts upon determinable parties harm of a gravity analogous to that required under tort law. Id. at 964. [10] Our opinion in Price reveals that the common feature of political expression is reference to state action. For example, we referred to expressive activity that is occasioned by the conduct of government actors and regards a matter of public concern. Id. at 961. Expressive activity is political, for the purposes of the responsibility clause, if its point is to comment on government action, whether applauding an old policy or proposing a new one, or opposing a candidate for office or criticizing the conduct of an official acting under color of law. [11] The judicial quest is for some express or clearly implied reference to governmental action. In contrast, where an individual's expression focuses on the conduct of a private partyincluding the speaker himself or herselfit is not political. In Price, the State conceded that Colleen Price was protesting police treatment of another citizen before an officer warned her to be quiet. 622 N.E.2d at 956-57. After the warning, her expression did shift to a defense of her own conduct, id. at 957, but a conviction for disorderly conduct requires proof of unreasonable noise both before and after an official warning. See Ind.Code Ann. § 35-45-1-3(2) (West Supp.1996). It was the State's reliance on Price's pre-warning political expression to prove an essential element of the offense that was fatal to the conviction. A court need not engage in speculation as to what a speaker might have meant. We will judge the nature of expression by an objective standard, and the burden of proof is on the claimant to demonstrate that his or her expression would have been understood as political. If the expression, viewed in context, is ambiguous, a reviewing court should find that the claimant has not established that it was political and should evaluate the constitutionality of any state-imposed restriction of the expression under standard rationality review. See Price, 622 N.E.2d at 959-60. If, however, a claimant succeeds in demonstrating that his or her expression was political, we may assume that the expression did not undermine peace, safety, and well-being. To sustain the challenged state action, the State must demonstrate that its action did not materially burden the claimant's political expression. Our opinion in Price suggests that state action does not impose a material burden on expression if either the magnitude of the impairment is slight, 622 N.E.2d at 960 n. 7, or the expression threatens to inflict particularized harm analogous to tortious injury on readily identifiable private interests, id. at 964.
Whittington has established that the state restricted his expressive activity. He was convicted of making unreasonable noise based solely on his loud speaking during Finnell's investigation of the reported domestic dispute. Whittington has failed to demonstrate, however, that his expressive activity did not constitute an abuse of the right to speak. We have little difficulty concluding that his expression was not political. Whittington testified that his remarks were not directed toward Officer Finnell. (R. at 82.) Whittington was irritated that the police were investigating the domestic complaint (R. at 84, 66), but he appears to have directed his frustration toward his sister's boyfriend, who may have been the one who summoned the police. He also protested that he had not done anything and that the other witnesses were lying. (R. at 66.) These statements involve the conduct of private individuals, not state action. In the final analysis, the evidence does not support an assertion that Whittington's expression was political. Thus, we must apply rationality review in determining whether the state could reasonably have concluded that Whittington's expressive activity, because of its volume, was an abuse of the right to speak or was, in other words, a threat to peace, safety, and well-being. We easily conclude that Whittington has not negated every conceivable basis for the state action in his case. Collins, 644 N.E.2d at 80. In Price we abstractly observed that abating excessive noise is an objective our legislature may legitimately pursue. 622 N.E.2d at 960. On the facts of this case, it is reasonably conceivable that the loud outbursts in the concrete circumstances of this case could have agitated other persons in the apartment, sparked additional disruptions of Finnell's investigation, or interfered with his ability to manage the medical crew and the alleged crime scene. The noisy tirade could have threatened the safety of Whittington's sister by aggravating her trauma or by distracting the medical personnel tending her injury. Finally, the volume of the speech undoubtedly made it highly annoying to all present. The state could therefore have believed Whittington's outbursts constituted an abuse of the right to speak and, as such, fell within the purview of the police power. We hold that Whittington's conviction for disorderly conduct did not contravene the right to speak, as guaranteed by Section 9 of the Indiana Bill of Rights.