Opinion ID: 2797810
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Time, Place, and Manner Regulation

Text: Although we conclude that Ordinance 2401 is content neutral, that does not mean that the ordinance necessarily was constitutional. In order to pass constitutional muster as a time, place, and manner regulation, Ordinance 2401 must also be “narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest” and “leave open ample alternative channels for communication.” Ward, 491 U.S. at 791. We have little 5 To say that generally applicable bans on particular forms of speech are content-neutral regulations is not to suggest that such bans will always be constitutional. On the contrary, the Supreme Court has indicated that such bans are suspect when they suppress more speech than is necessary to accomplish their objectives. See, e.g., Martin v. City of Struthers, 319 U.S. 141, 145–46 (1943) (ordinance prohibiting ringing doorbells for the purpose of distributing handbills violated the First Amendment, because “[d]oor to door distribution of circulars is essential to the poorly financed causes of little people”); Schneider v. Town of Irvington, 308 U.S. 147, 162 (1939) (ordinances banning all distribution of literature in public streets in order to prevent litter were invalid under the First Amendment; the better course was for cities to punish “those who actually throw papers on the streets”). In this section of our opinion, we hold only that blanket bans applicable to all speakers are content-neutral. 20 NATIVITY SCENES COMM. V. CITY OF SANTA MONICA difficulty, however, in concluding that the ordinance satisfies all of these requirements.
Ordinance 2401 served at least two significant governmental interests: First, it preserved the aesthetic qualities of Palisades Park and prevented obstruction of patrons’ views of the ocean. The Supreme Court has held on several occasions that governments may regulate speech for aesthetic purposes. See, e.g., Clark v. Cmty. for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288, 296 (1984) (National Park Service could ban camping in certain public parks in order to “maintain[]” the parks “in an attractive and intact condition”); Members of City Council of L.A. v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 808 (1984) (city of Los Angeles could ban posters on public utility poles in order to combat “visual clutter and blight”). And the City has long manifested its intent to preserve its parks from clutter: since at least 1994, it has prohibited unattended displays in all parks while making a limited exception for “Winter Displays” in Palisades Park. Ordinance 2401 simply made that prohibition applicable to all of Santa Monica’s parks at all times. Second, Ordinance 2401 conserved the City’s resources. Prior to 2011, coordinating the Winter Displays in Palisades Park had been an easy task for the City’s staff; in 2011, however, the staff spent “hundreds of hours” administering the lottery system, and all indications were that the system would become more time-consuming in the future as the number of applications for space increased. It was permissible for the City to seek to alleviate this burden on its employees’ time. See, e.g., Clark, 468 U.S. at 296–97 (National Park Service’s total ban on sleeping in certain parks NATIVITY SCENES COMM. V. CITY OF SANTA MONICA 21 could be justified on the ground that operating a selective permitting system for camping demonstrations would be an administrative burden on the Park Service). The Committee dismisses both of these rationales as insignificant and argues that Ordinance 2401 does not further either of them. “Conclusory allegations of law, however, are insufficient to defeat a motion to dismiss.” Lee v. City of L.A., 250 F.3d 668, 679 (9th Cir. 2001). The Committee must allege facts that show that the Ordinance 2401 did not serve the ends the City said it did, and the Committee has failed to do this. The Committee has no answer whatsoever to the statements by City employees—which the Committee itself reproduced as an exhibit to its complaint—that eliminating the Winter Displays saved the City many hours of staff time, other than stating that it simply does not believe the City. And with respect to the City’s stated aesthetic concerns, the Committee has offered only one factual allegation that indicates that those concerns were insignificant: the fact that at the time that the City created the formal Winter Display system in 2003, the City’s staff believed that allocating a twoblock area of Palisades Park for the displays would not cause problems. This fact does not plausibly show that the aesthetic concerns the City cited in 2012 to justify Ordinance 2401 were insignificant. The City was entitled to reassess conditions in the Park as it gained experience with the Winter Display system over time, and by 2012, the City was clearly convinced that change was needed. The Committee also contends that, in any event, the City’s stated concerns are not valid bases for regulation because they stem from the “emotive impact” of the Committee’s religious speech. But the Committee has not alleged any plausible facts to support this claim. The City’s 22 NATIVITY SCENES COMM. V. CITY OF SANTA MONICA regulation targeted the aesthetic and logistical problems created by the influx of display space applications in 2011, not the emotional impact of the nativity scenes on people who saw them. The atheists who applied for display space in Palisades Park may have done so in reaction to the presence of the nativity scenes, but that does not mean that any problems that the increased number of applications created for the City are a consequence of the “emotive impact” of the nativity scenes. A regulation impermissibly targets the “emotive impact” of speech only if it is justified by reference to the immediate emotional reaction of listeners. See Boos, 485 U.S. at 321 (invalidating ordinance aimed solely at “protect[ing] the dignity of foreign diplomatic personnel by shielding them from speech that is critical of their governments”—protest signs outside of embassies). Ordinance 2401 is not such a regulation.
We also conclude that Ordinance 2401 was narrowly tailored. Although the Committee points out several steps that the City could have taken to address the problems it identified, short of repealing the Winter Display exception, these observations are irrelevant to the question of narrow tailoring. A time, place, and manner regulation “need not be the least restrictive or least intrusive means” of furthering the government’s interests in order to be narrowly tailored. Ward, 491 U.S. at 798. Rather, narrow tailoring requires only that a regulation “promote[] a substantial government interest that would be achieved less effectively absent the regulation” and not “burden substantially more speech than is necessary to further” that interest. Id. at 799. NATIVITY SCENES COMM. V. CITY OF SANTA MONICA 23 There is no question that Ordinance 2401 furthers the City’s interests in preserving the aesthetics of Palisades Park and conserving City resources. Nor did the ordinance burden substantially more speech than necessary: unattended displays contribute to clutter and require laborious permitting in ways that other forms of speech, even attended displays, usually do not, and the ordinance affected only unattended displays. See Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474, 485 (1988) (stating that a regulation is narrowly tailored if it “eliminates no more than the exact source of the ‘evil’ it seeks to remedy”). The City’s regulation therefore satisfies the narrow tailoring requirement.
Finally, we find that Ordinance 2401 leaves open ample alternative channels of communication. As the district court observed, there remain “many alternative avenues” by which the Committee can communicate its religious message: it can erect its unattended nativity scenes on private property, and it can speak in many other ways in Palisades Park, including erecting one-day, attended displays, leafleting, preaching, holding signs, and caroling.6 6 During the pendency of this appeal, the City made two requests for judicial notice of various documents that purport to show that, in the years after Ordinance 2401 was passed, the Committee did several of these things, including displaying the unattended nativity scenes on private property and holding live Christmas events in Palisades Park. The pertinent question for our purposes, however, is whether Ordinance 2401 left open ample alternative channels of communication; it does not matter whether the Committee actually availed itself of those alternative channels. We therefore deny the City’s two requests for judicial notice on the grounds that the documents to be noticed are irrelevant. See, e.g., Ruiz v. City of Santa Maria, 160 F.3d 543, 548 n.13 (9th Cir. 1998) (denying 24 NATIVITY SCENES COMM. V. CITY OF SANTA MONICA The Committee offers several arguments why the alternative channels of communication left to it are inadequate. First, it contends that “[a]n alternative is not ample if the speaker is not permitted to reach the intended audience,” Bay Area Peace Navy v. United States, 914 F.2d 1224, 1229 (9th Cir. 1990) (internal quotation marks omitted), and that its “intended audience” is visitors to Palisades Park, which it claims is “the optimum location for reaching the greatest number of spectators” in Santa Monica. Even assuming, however, that the Committee is entitled to insist that it be specifically allowed to reach visitors to Palisades Park, the Committee is still able to speak in the Park after Ordinance 2401; it simply cannot do so by erecting large, unattended structures. Compare Knights of Columbus, 272 F.3d at 34 (ban on unattended structures on Battle Green left open alternative channels of communication, in part because a creche could still appear on the Green as an attended display), with Bay Area Peace Navy, 914 F.2d at 1229 (75-yard security zone around reviewing stand for Navy’s “Fleet Week” did not afford pacifist demonstrators ample alternative channels of communication, because it prevented them from reaching their intended audience of visitors to Fleet Week). Second, the Committee argues that it would be “impractical” for it to arrange for the nativity scenes to be attended displays because the Committee “cannot practically recruit volunteers or afford to pay people to be present” while the displays are up. In general, however, the fact that the alternative channels of communication left open by a regulation are more expensive is not, by itself, sufficient to request for judicial notice, in part because information to be noticed did not bear on the “relevant issue” before the court). NATIVITY SCENES COMM. V. CITY OF SANTA MONICA 25 show that those alternative channels are inadequate. See, e.g., Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. at 812 & n.30 (ordinance prohibiting posting of signs on utility poles left open alternative channels of communication, such as speaking in person and distributing literature in the same locations—both of which tactics are presumably more expensive); Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U.S. 77, 88–89 (1949) (fact that “more people may be more easily and cheaply reached by sound trucks” than by other means was not enough to “call forth constitutional protection” for that specific mode of communication). Finally, the Committee argues in its reply brief that the First Amendment “protects [its] right to choose a particular means or avenue of speech”—i.e., unattended displays. But although we have held that speakers have a First Amendment right to “choose a particular means or avenue of speech . . . to advocate their cause,” we have also made clear that “[t]his is not the same as saying that [speakers] have a First Amendment right to dictate the manner in which they convey their message within their chosen avenue. Government may regulate the manner of speech in a content-neutral way.” Foti v. City of Menlo Park, 146 F.3d 629, 641–42 (9th Cir. 1998) (although abortion protesters had the right to communicate their message by picketing, city was permitted to regulate the manner of this picketing, e.g. by regulating the size and number of their signs). Thus, even assuming that the First Amendment protects the Committee’s right to speak through large displays, the City was permitted to limit the manner of that speech by requiring that such displays be attended or erected as part of limited-duration “community events.” See Foti, 146 F.3d at 641–42; see also United Bhd. of Carpenters & Joiners of Am. Local 586 v. NLRB, 540 F.3d 957, 969 (9th Cir. 2008) (“We will not invalidate a regulation merely 26 NATIVITY SCENES COMM. V. CITY OF SANTA MONICA because it restricts the speaker’s preferred method of communication.”). Ordinance 2401, which allows the Committee to disseminate its message in person in many different ways, including attended displays and unattended displays that are part of single-day “community events,” therefore leaves open sufficient alternative channels of communication. Because Ordinance 2401 was a valid time, place, and manner regulation, we affirm the district court’s conclusion that the Committee’s claim under the Free Speech Clause is not viable and must be dismissed.