Opinion ID: 203074
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Adequacy of the Available Alternatives

Text: In finding that Augusta offered plaintiffs no adequate alternatives to a street march, the district court concluded that the parade ordinance arguably embraced sidewalks as well as streets. I agree with the majority that the ordinance should not be read in that manner. The City's past practice sufficiently demonstrates that the ordinance does not extend to sidewalks and that sidewalks are thus an available free alternative to the streets, along with parks and the Statehouse steps. The question thus becomes whether streets provide such a unique forum for the communication of views that other public fora, including sidewalks, cannot be deemed adequate alternatives. That assessment necessarily requires an examination of the speaker's objectives both in terms of the message she wishes to communicate and the audience she seeks to reach. Still, the match between the desired forum and a substitute need not be perfect: `[T]he lens of inquiry must focus not on whether a degree of curtailment exists, but on whether the remaining communicative avenues are adequate.' Globe Newspaper, 100 F.3d at 193 (quoting Nat'l Amusements, Inc. v. Town of Dedham, 43 F.3d 731, 745 (1st Cir.1995)). In assessing adequacy, we have been particularly sensitive to the ability of a party to disseminate its message to the same general audience despite the restrictions at issue. In Globe Newspaper, we considered the validity of a ban on newsracks in the Beacon Hill Historical District of Boston. 100 F.3d at 178. We noted that the regulation did not prevent the plaintiff newspapers from selling their publications in the District by means of street vendors, thereby accomplishing their objective in the very public forum the District's sidewalksfrom which the newsracks are banned. 100 F.3d at 193. The Supreme Court reached a similar conclusion in City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 104 S.Ct. 2118, 80 L.Ed.2d 772 (1984), which involved a challenge to an ordinance banning all posted signs, including political campaign posters, in the City of Los Angeles. The Court found that the ban did not affect any individual's freedom to exercise the right to speak and to distribute literature in the same place where the posting of signs . . . is prohibited. Id. at 812, 104 S.Ct. 2118. Similarly, in National Amusements, we upheld a town bylaw prohibiting the showing of movies between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. despite the appellant's assertion that the regulation foreclose[d] the opportunity to communicate its message to a distinct segment of the movie-going publicthose who would attend only a midnight showing. 43 F.3d at 745. Although we acknowledged that the bylaw would diminish[] the total quantity of appellant's speech in some measure, and simultaneously curtail[] its opportunity to communicate with patrons who preferred midnight shows, we concluded that thwarting such an idiosyncratic preference cannot be equated with a denial of adequate avenues of communication. Id. In each of these cases, while some potential recipients of the message may have been missed, the message could still reach the intended audience. In this case, plaintiff Sullivan sought a parade permit in February 2004 on behalf of a group known as the March for Truth Coalition, which advocates the worldwide end of war and empire-building as well as social and economic reform. Plaintiff Dansinger sought a permit to hold a peace march and rally in conjunction with the Million Worker March to be held in Washington, D.C., in October 2004. [20] Both proposed parades were thus aimed at shaping public attitudes about matters of public policy-the type of political speech that long has been associated with street marches. Of the available free alternatives, it is easy to conclude that parks and similar fixed sites where speakers may congregate are not adequate alternative locations for achieving the objectives of street marches. A stationary gathering whose message will be delivered to only the finite group of non-participants who also happen to be in that spot or travel by it is considerably different from a march that inevitably will come into contact with waves of outsiders. A march down Main Street will display the message to pedestrians, business owners, customers, and even motorists who encounter the periphery of the procession while being re-routed. Although television and newspaper coverage could enlarge the audience for a stationary protest, that possibility depends on the editorial judgments of the media, and any message actually disseminated would be both limited in scope and lacking the immediacy of personal contact. If plaintiffs' objective had been to demand that state legislators take particular action on pending legislation, the City's assertion that the Statehouse steps were an adequate alternative would have more force. Plaintiffs, however, sought to persuade as many members of the public as they could reach to join their efforts to advocate for changes in public policy. In finding that the City could not constitutionally block indigents from using the public streets to convey their message, the district court relied on the opinion of plaintiffs' expert, Joe H. Bandy, III, a sociology professor at Bowdoin College with a special expertise in the study of social movements. See Sullivan, 406 F.Supp.2d at 124-25. Professor Bandy confirmed the superiority of moving speech for communicating a political message: With a march that moves through public streets, the demonstrators can bring their protest message to a variety of different audiences, audiences that are not a part of the activists' direct constituency but the broader public. . . . [B]y protesting through a format that moves through different public spaces, a march is more likely to gain the attention of the media and political leaders than if the demonstration were localized in one area that did not inconvenience the general public in some way. Bandy Declaration, 1/20/05, at 3, App. at 111. While large gatherings in public places can sometimes attract similar attention, the force of a message conveyed by the more typical small protest group will be much greater if the group is marching down the city's main thoroughfares, displacing other people's daily routines, than if it is confined to a park or the Statehouse steps. See Gary Wiseman, Note, Paying for Free Speech: The Continuing Validity of Cox v. New Hampshire, 64 Wash. U.L.Q. 985, 988 n. 16 (1986) (hereinafter Wiseman) (In the absence of spectators, even the most exciting demonstration lacks force.). Therefore, when a speaker seeks to motivate the general public about a matter of public policy, the opportunity to communicate from a fixed location will rarely be an adequate substitute for a march down city streets. Sidewalks, however, present a closer question. Like the street march, a sidewalk march provides access to a constantly changing audience that will likely include many of the same individuals who would observe a procession moving down the middle of the street. Although the City notes that a sidewalk procession would be viewed by more motorists than a street march because the streets would be open and cars would be able to travel directly past the procession, that theoretical advantage is illusory. Such motorists will of necessity be focused on traffic conditions and will be unable to give other than incidental attention to the parade. [21] Moreover, it is not only the size of the crowd on the sidelines that affects the message being conveyed. If a march is confined to the sidewalks, the perception that space is limited, and that fewer marchers can therefore be accommodated, will reduce the number of participants. The district court reasonably accepted appellees' assertion that safety concerns may deter some would-be participants from joining a sidewalk march because of the need to cross traffic and the lesser police presence. Sullivan, 406 F.Supp.2d at 125. Indeed, such concerns are likely to suppress the number of spectators as well, with shoppers and others altering their routes to avoid the sidewalk congestion. The resulting reduction in the number of marchers, as well as spectators, dilutes the message that is delivered: [B]y reducing the number of participants or spectators, a speaker forfeits other advantages of size. A mass demonstration conveys an image of power to bystanders and participants alike, reinforces the group's commitment to its cause, . . . and appears to circumvent the elite's power to control mass communication. Wiseman, 64 Wash. U.L.Q. at 988 n. 16 (quoting Stanley Ingber, The Marketplace of Ideas: A Legitimizing Myth, 1984 Duke L.J. 1, 41 n. 7); see also Eric Neisser, Charging for Free Speech: User Fees and Insurance in the Marketplace of Ideas, 74 Geo. L.J. 257, 297 (1985) (hereinafter Neisser) ([T]hose who hold unpopular, unknown, or unrepresented views can express the strength of their position (when allowed in the public marketplace of ideas) only through their numbers.). Street marches have the distinct advantage of allowing more participants to march side-by-side, giving the demonstrationand its messagea more commanding presence. Professor Bandy observed that the narrowness of sidewalks can affect both the logistics of a march and the strength of the message: [A]s a matter of logistics, having a large number of people file in a very narrow pathway would make a more snake-like procession rather than a mass rally procession. This narrowing of the demonstration would likely dampen the message because the demonstration would not look as large to passers by or the media. See Bandy Declaration at 5, App. at 113. The large signs and banners we have come to expect as part of a parade cannot be displayed across the narrower width of a sidewalk, and the logistical difficulty of carrying such oversized messages front-to-back along the edge of the sidewalk undoubtedly would discourage their use. No matter how long the procession, a small band of protesters carrying small signs simply does not communicate the same dramatic image of massive support as a crowd walking six or eight abreast carrying street-wide signs. Thus, excluding speakers from the streets does not simply relocate their message. The strength of the message is measurably diminished by the perception that it lacks support from the masses. See Bandy Declaration at 5, App. at 113. [22] While the numbersboth real and perceivedare important, they are not the only relevant factor. The tradition of a parade as a public event means that a street march commands our attention in a way that a sidewalk procession does not. As a community, we look forward to parades, we are attentive to them, and we interrupt our everyday lives to accommodate them. A parade is a significant community eventwhether its purpose is to recognize Irish heritage on St. Patrick's Day, to celebrate a sports championship, or to express gratitude to soldiers on Veterans Day. A marcher confined to the sidewalk is thus denied the public forum that we historically have used to express our collective sentiment. See Timothy Zick, Space, Place, and Speech: The Expressive Topography, 74 Geo. Wash. L.Rev. 439, 460 (2006) (hereinafter Zick) (In terms of communicative behavior, place is as critical to expressive experience as voice, sight, and auditory function.). Moreover, in recent decades, streets have acquired powerful symbolism as a forum for protest and political expression. The images of 1960s civil rights activists marching through the streets remain vivid, and those marches continue to inspire the current generation of street protests on matters of global importanceincluding racial injustice, war and peace, and the inattentiveness of a community to its poor. See, e.g., Iraq Vets Lead Syracuse March, People's Weekly World, Oct. 11, 2007 (describing September 2007 march through streets of Syracuse, N.Y., by more than 2,500 peace activists, including members of Fort Drum chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War); Rallies Support Jena Teens, San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 21, 2007 (from New York Times news service) (describing a slow-moving march that filled streets, spilled onto sidewalks and stretched for miles, with more than 10,000 demonstrators, protesting the treatment of six black Louisiana teenagers arrested in the beating of a white classmate); Janitors to March for Pay Increases, San Mateo County Times, June 14, 2007 (describing planned street march by [t]housands of Silicon Valley janitors from East Palo Alto to the heart of Palo Alto's affluent downtown as part of International Justice for Janitors Day); Demonstrators to Turn Out for Immigration Reform, Denver Rocky Mountain News, May 1, 2007 (reporting that Denver and other cities across the nation will host another round of marches today to demonstrate that the campaign for immigration reform is still under way). Indeed, taking it to the streets is itself part of the activist message, i.e., that ordinary people have the power to take over the public way in their pursuit of social change. See Zick, 74 Geo. Wash. L.Rev. at 471 (Parades, protests, and demonstrations are . . . akin to temporary appropriations of the streets. They express specific social and political messages and give public voice to sentiments about existing power relations.). Sidewalk protests, by contrast, are commonly associated with more particularized dissent. A sidewalk demonstration is often linked to a specific business or institution, focusing attention on what is occurring at that moment at that place-targeting, for example, a business that refuses to serve or hire members of minority groups, an abortion clinic, or an employer engaged in a labor dispute. There are exceptions, of course. As the City points out, the civil rights movement used sidewalk marches on multiple occasions during the 1960s. The successful Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march along Highway 80 in late March 1965 could not have been more powerful if the thousands of marchers had been walking down the middle of the road. Although such marches had enormous impact during an extraordinary time in our country's history, when equal rights demonstrators had widespread support and the world's attention, the fact remains that a sidewalk march is usually an inadequate substitute for the streets when the message to be disseminated is unrelated to a specific locale. The stakes in access to the free public forum have also become higher as other methods for reaching mass audiences have grown more expensive and out of reach for the average citizen. [A]ll speakers cannot gain access to all forums. For example, many speakers cannot afford television or radio broadcasting time, and speakers espousing unconventional views may find the mass media unreceptive. For this reason, public streets and parks, which are accessible to speakers regardless of their financial resources or media appeal, are vitally important public forums. Maintaining free access to public streets and parks helps insure a market composed of a wide range of competing ideas. Wiseman, 64 Wash. U.L.Q. at 986 (footnotes omitted); see also Santa Monica Food Not Bombs v. Santa Monica, 450 F.3d 1022, 1036 (9th Cir.2006) (As traditional public fora, parks, sidewalks, and streets `provide a free forum for those who cannot afford newspaper advertisements, television infomercials, or billboards.' Those fora must not be regulated too restrictively, lest they become unavailable to those who have little or no recourse to other, often costly, areas for public discourse.) (citation omitted); Bandy Declaration at 7, App. at 115 ([S]ocial movements have none or very few alternative methods to communicate their message other than low-cost demonstrations in public spaces and streets.); Neisser, 74 Geo. L.J. at 297. [23] Although the internet has provided new fora for communicating with large numbers of people, websites, blogs and other publicly accessible online opportunities are not substitutes for the face-to-face experiences that have, from ancient times, been a part of the privileges, immunities, rights, and liberties of citizens. See Menotti v. Seattle, 409 F.3d 1113, 1174 (9th Cir.2005) (Paez, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (`[T]here is no internet connection, no telephone call, no television coverage that can compare to attending a political rally in person. . . .' Public protests are at the heart of the First Amendment and are critical for incubating civic engagement and encouraging spirited debate.) (quoting Hodgkins v. Peterson, 355 F.3d 1048, 1063 (7th Cir.2004)); Thomas P. Crocker, Displacing Dissent: The Role of `Place' in First Amendment Jurisprudence, 75 Fordham L.Rev. 2587, 2590 (2007) ([T]he Internet does not provide for serendipitous occasions to encounter others face-to-face or to discover the new or the strange in both a social and public setting.); Zick, 74 Geo. Wash. L.Rev. at 484 (There is no question that an abundance of speech takes place in these new places; but courts must recognize that this speech is qualitatively and, quite often, quantitatively different from speech in real places.). The streets thus remain the only publicly accessible forum that offers speakers both the immediacy of personal contact andin contrast to sidewalksthe realistic potential for attracting a large audience and widespread attention with a powerful message undiluted by space constraints. To be sure, the Constitution does not guarantee every speaker her forum of choice. See, e.g., Heffron v. Int'l Soc. for Krishna Consciousness, 452 U.S. 640, 647, 101 S.Ct. 2559, 69 L.Ed.2d 298 (1981) (It is [ ] common ground . . . that the First Amendment does not guarantee the right to communicate one's views at all times and places or in any manner that may be desired.). As noted earlier, an alternative need not have precisely the same impact to be ample, see Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. at 812, 104 S.Ct. 2118; Globe Newspaper, 100 F.3d at 193. However, under any meaningful standard of heightened review, that alternative forum cannot be ample if it lacks the qualities that make the streets a uniquely powerful forum for expression, and thereby leaves indigent speakers and the public they seek to influence with a substantially different and diminished First Amendment experience. In upholding the sign ordinance in Taxpayers for Vincent, the Court concluded that there was no reason to believe the expressive benefits of posting signs on public property could not be obtained through other means. 466 U.S. at 812, 104 S.Ct. 2118. Noting the absence of a traditional right of public access to utility poles for purposes of communication comparable to that recognized for public streets and parks, id. at 814, 104 S.Ct. 2118, the Court observed: Notwithstanding appellees' general assertions in their brief concerning the utility of political posters, nothing in the findings indicates that the posting of political posters on public property is a uniquely valuable or important mode of communication, or that appellees' ability to communicate effectively is threatened by ever-increasing restrictions on expression. Id. at 812, 104 S.Ct. 2118. Here, by contrast, we are considering access to `[t]raditional public forum property,' which `occupies a special position in terms of First Amendment protection,' id. at 813, 104 S.Ct. 2118 (quoting United States v. Grace, 461 U.S. 171, 180, 103 S.Ct. 1702, 75 L.Ed.2d 736 (1983)). And, as I have described, the communication difference between the streets and sidewalks is substantial, despite their physical proximity. A speaker whose march may proceed down the middle of Main Street has numerous advantageslarger numbers of spectators and participants, the space to accommodate bolder and bigger signs, the focused attention drawn by a parade, and the symbolic power of taking it to the streets. This case implicates what Taxpayers for Vincent did not: a uniquely valuable or important mode of communication, 466 U.S. at 812, 104 S.Ct. 2118, that has immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public, Hague, 307 U.S. at 515, 59 S.Ct. 954. Because a message communicated in the streets is uniquely powerful, a speaker in Augusta who is unable to pay the permit fee to hold a street march has no adequate alternative. That fee barrier is particularly unacceptable given the government's role as trustee for the public in providing safe access for expressive and other uses of the streets. See Cox, 312 U.S. at 574, 61 S.Ct. 762. Consequently, the Constitution requires that the city's parade ordinance include an indigency exception.