Opinion ID: 1382891
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The One-Hundred-Foot Bubble Zone

Text: As the District Court recognized, the bubble zone defined by the Ordinance is virtually identical to the one in the Colorado statute Hill found facially valid. [8] Brown v. City of Pittsburgh, 543 F.Supp.2d 448, 471-72 (W.D.Pa.2008) (juxtaposing relevant provisions). Compare Pittsburgh, Pa., Code tit. 6, § 623.03, with Colo.Rev.Stat. § 18-9-122(3). [9] At oral argument, Brown's counsel conceded that, under Hill, § 623.03's bubble zone, taken alone, is constitutional on its face. We agree that § 623.03's bubble zone is materially indistinguishable from the one upheld in Hill. The petitioners in Hill put forward several different arguments contesting the statute's constitutionality, but the Supreme Court found none of them convincing. The Court rejected the contention that the bubble zone's restrictions are content-based, observing that `[t]he principal inquiry in determining content neutrality... is whether the government has adopted a regulation of speech because of disagreement with the message it conveys.' Hill, 530 U.S. at 719, 120 S.Ct. 2480 (quoting Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 791, 109 S.Ct. 2746, 105 L.Ed.2d 661 (1989)); see id. at 737, 120 S.Ct. 2480 (Souter, J., concurring) ([A] restriction is content based only if it is imposed because of the content of the speech, and not because of offensive behavior identified with its delivery. (internal citation omitted)). The Colorado statute in Hill evinces no such invidious intent because its goals of protecting access to medical facilities and providing clear guidelines to police are unrelated to the content of the demonstrators' speech, its restrictions apply equally to all demonstrators, regardless of viewpoint, and the statutory language makes no reference to the content of the speech. Id. at 719, 720, 120 S.Ct. 2480 (majority opinion) (internal quotation marks omitted). Nor is the statute content-based because it restricts knowingly approaching another for purposes of oral protest, education, or counseling, while imposing no limits on casual conversationfor example, saying good morning. This distinction serves not to suppress certain disapproved ideas, which would be presumptively invalid, but instead to further legitimate, content-neutral goals: [T]he statute's restriction seeks to protect those who enter a health care facility from the harassment, the nuisance, the persistent importuning, the following, the dogging, and the implied threat of physical touching that can accompany an unwelcome approach within eight feet of a patient by a person wishing to argue vociferously face-to-face and perhaps thrust an undesired handbill upon her. The statutory phrases, oral protest, education, or counseling, distinguish speech activities likely to have those consequences from speech activities... that are most unlikely to have those consequences. Id. at 724, 120 S.Ct. 2480; see also McGuire I, 260 F.3d at 44 (As long as a regulation serves a legitimate purpose unrelated to expressive content, it is deemed content-neutral even if it has an incidental effect on some speakers and not others.). In short, [t]he purpose of the Colorado statute is not to protect a potential listener from hearing a particular message. It is to protect those who seek medical treatment from the potential physical and emotional harm suffered when an unwelcome individual delivers a message (whatever its content) by physically approaching an individual at close range, i.e., within eight feet. Hill, 530 U.S. at 718 n. 25, 120 S.Ct. 2480. The Hill Court also noted that the Colorado bubble zone is not a regulation of speech per se, but rather a regulation of the places where some speech may occur. Id. at 719, 120 S.Ct. 2480. That is, the bubble zone does not entirely foreclose any means of communication. Id. at 726, 120 S.Ct. 2480. It does not prohibit any message, whether expressed orally or by sign or leaflet, but simply imposes an eight-foot separation between the speaker and the audience (absent consent to approach closer). As such, the validity of the regulation is determined by reference to the Court's time, place, and manner doctrine. Under that doctrine, a regulation of the time, place, or manner of protected speech is constitutionally permissible if it is narrowly tailored to serve the government's legitimate, content-neutral interests, Ward, 491 U.S. at 798, 109 S.Ct. 2746, and leave[s] open ample alternative channels for communication, id. at 791, 109 S.Ct. 2746 (internal quotation marks omitted). When a time, place, and manner regulation takes the form of a generally applicable statute, it may satisfy the tailoring requirement even though it is not the least restrictive or least intrusive means of serving the statutory goal. Hill, 530 U.S. at 726, 120 S.Ct. 2480; see Madsen, 512 U.S. at 765, 114 S.Ct. 2516 (contrasting this standard with the more stringent scrutiny applicable to a challenged injunction, which is valid only if it burden[s] no more speech than necessary to serve a significant government interest). Having concluded that the statute is content-neutral, the Court found that its restrictions on speech are sufficiently tailored to its legitimate objectives and leave open ample alternative avenues of communication. Hill, 530 U.S. at 726, 120 S.Ct. 2480. The enforcement of an eight-foot barrier is a constitutionally tolerable burden on expression because signs, pictures, and voice itself can cross an 8-foot gap with ease. Id. at 729, 120 S.Ct. 2480. The Court acknowledged that [t]he burden on the ability to distribute handbills is more serious because it seems possible that an 8-foot interval could hinder the ability of a leafletter to deliver handbills to some unwilling recipients. Id. at 727, 120 S.Ct. 2480. But noting that the statute did not prevent a leafletter from simply standing near the path of oncoming pedestrians and proffering his or her material, which the pedestrians can easily accept, the Court found the regulation did not impose an excessive restraint. Id. In support of this conclusion, the Court referred to its earlier decision in Heffron v. International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Inc., 452 U.S. 640, 101 S.Ct. 2559, 69 L.Ed.2d 298 (1981), where it had upheld a regulation restricting the distribution of literature to fair booths. Heffron emphasized that the fair-booth restriction primarily burdened the distributors' ability to communicate with unwilling readers and afforded an adequate opportunity to win the[] attention of willing listeners. Hill, 530 U.S. at 728, 120 S.Ct. 2480 (quoting Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U.S. 77, 87, 69 S.Ct. 448, 93 L.Ed. 513 (1949)). The bubble zone established by the Colorado statute (and the Pittsburgh Ordinance) impairs primarily the effort to communicate with unwilling listeners, and by allowing leafletters significant mobility, it interferes far less with communication than the state-fair regulation upheld in Heffron. Id. at 730, 120 S.Ct. 2480. In sum, in light of the state's substantial and legitimate interest in protecting those attempting to enter health care facilities, who are often in particularly vulnerable physical and emotional conditions, the Court found the Colorado bubble zone to be an exceedingly modest restriction on the speakers' ability to approach. Id. at 729, 120 S.Ct. 2480. The Court was unmoved by petitioners' argument that the state could achieve its objectives through less restrictive means. As noted above, a content-neutral time, place, and manner restriction embodied in a generally applicable regulation need not be the least restrictive or least intrusive means of serving the statutory goal. Id. at 726, 120 S.Ct. 2480. [W]hether or not the 8-foot interval is the best possible accommodation of the competing interests at stake, the Court believed it was obliged to accord a measure of deference to the judgment of the Colorado Legislature. Id. at 727, 120 S.Ct. 2480. The Court rejected the view, advanced by Justice Kennedy in his dissent, id. at 777-78, 120 S.Ct. 2480 (Kennedy, J., dissenting), that the state interests at stake could be adequately servedwith less restriction of protected speechby enforcing pre-existing prohibitions on battery and harassment. The Court recognized that the statute's prophylactic approach to protect[ing] those who wish to enter health care facilities ... will sometimes inhibit a demonstrator whose approach in fact would have proved harmless. Id. at 729, 120 S.Ct. 2480 (majority opinion). But it found the bubble-zone approach to be justified by the great difficulty of protecting, say, a pregnant woman from physical harassment with legal rules that focus exclusively on the individual impact of each instance of behavior, demanding in each case an accurate characterization (as harassing or not harassing) of each individual movement within the 8-foot boundary. Id. In light of the difficulties inherent in making the individualized, case-by-case judgments necessary to enforce a battery or harassment law, the Court concluded that [a] bright-line prophylactic rule may be the best way to provide protection, and, at the same time, by offering clear guidance and avoiding subjectivity, to protect speech itself. Id. In sum, the Hill Court upheld the Colorado statute, finding it to be a content-neutral time, place, and manner regulation that was narrowly tailored to serve significant government interests while leaving open ample alternative avenues of speech. [10] As the bubble zone created by the Ordinance at issue here is a virtually verbatim copy of the Hill statute, we find this portion of the Ordinance, taken alone, to be facially valid under the First Amendment's Free Speech Clause.