Opinion ID: 2508648
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the sidewalk exception

Text: Under the ordinance, a minor may remain outside of his or her home during curfew hours if he or she is on the public right-of-way immediately abutting the minor's residence or that of a next-door neighbor, if the neighbor did not complain to the police department about the minor's presence. [36] The plaintiffs complain that the sidewalk exception is impermissibly vague because it grants neighbors standardless discretion to declare a minor in violation of the curfew without reason. Such a provision, they argue, is similar to the ordinance struck down as void for vagueness in Coates v. City of Cincinnati. [37] The Anchorage ordinance, however, is not comparable to that in Coates. There, the ordinance allowed police to criminalize conduct they found annoying. [38] The term annoying was what the court found vague because it provided no standard for proscribed conduct. [39] The ordinance here does not use such language. Rather, it allows minors to remain on the public right-of-way adjacent to their own homes and to remain on the public right-of-way immediately next to the residence of a next-door neighbor unless the neighbor complains to the police department. The fact that a neighbor has discretion to complain to the police poses no vagueness problem, because as the D.C. Circuit stated in Hutchins, [i]t is irrelevant, for purposes of evaluating vagueness, that a neighbor has `discretion' to call the police if a juvenile remains on the neighbor's sidewalk during curfew hoursthe discretion exercised in this situation is analogous to that exercised by property owners under trespass laws. [40] The plaintiffs' argument also fails because it is not the neighbor who issues the citation, but local law enforcement. That the neighbor makes a complaint simply means the minor has no defense under this exception. The minor may still remain outside if another exception applies. Moreover, contrary to the situation in Coates, a minor who remains on the sidewalk in front of the minor's own home would face no threat of prosecution. Because the sidewalk exception is sufficiently clear and does not give undue discretion to neighbors to implement the ordinance, the provision is not vague.