Opinion ID: 1494037
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: As to the Right of Free Assembly, the Holding of Meetings upon the Streets or in the Public Parks of Jersey City.

Text: An ordinance of Jersey City adopted April 15, 1930 by the Board of Commissioners provides that    no public parades or public assembly in or upon the public streets, highways, public parks or public buildings of Jersey City shall take place or be conducted until a permit shall be obtained from the Director of Public Safety. The ordinance also states that the Director of Public Safety is authorized to grant permits for parades and public assembly    upon application made to him at least three days prior to the proposed parade or public assembly. The ordinance provides further that the Director of Public Safety is authorized to refuse a permit    when, after investigation of all of the facts and circumstances pertinent to said application, he believes it to be proper to refuse the issuance thereof; provided, however, that said permit shall only be refused for the purpose of preventing riots, disturbances or disorderly assemblage. Substantial penalties are provided for the violation of the ordinance. It is the contention of the appellants that permits for the holding of public meetings in Jersey City were properly refused to the appellees because such meetings would have resulted in riots and disorderly assembly. We are of the opinion that the ordinance is unconstitutional in view of the fact that it permits the imposition of previous restraint upon the right of the individual to speak before an assembly of his fellows in a public place. The ordinance therefore prohibits peaceable assembly except upon terms repugnant to free speech. Freedom of speech and of the press are fundamental civil rights which are safeguarded to the individual by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. As was stated by Mr. Chief Justice Hughes, delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court in De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 57 S.Ct. 255, 260, 81 L.Ed. 278, These rights may be abused by using speech or press or assembly in order to incite to violence and crime. The people through their Legislatures may protect themselves against that abuse. But the legislative intervention can find constitutional justification only by dealing with the abuse. The rights themselves must not be curtailed. The refusal of the courts to allow previous restraint to be imposed upon the freedom of the press is well exemplified by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697, 51 S.Ct. 625, 628, 75 L.Ed. 1357. In the cited case a statute of Minnesota, Chapter 285 of the Session Laws of Minnesota for the year 1925. See Mason's Minnesota Statutes, 1927, §§ 10123-1 to 10123-3, provided for the abatement, as a public nuisance, of    a malicious, scandalous and defamatory newspaper and authorized suits in the name of the State to abate such periodicals and to enjoin publishers from further violations. Such a suit was brought against The Saturday Press published in Minneapolis. From the opinion of the Supreme Court it appears that the articles contained in The Saturday Press were inflammatory and had led to actual violence. By its decision the Supreme Court of the United States reversed a decree of the Supreme Court of Minnesota sustaining an injunction abating the publication of the periodical. Mr. Chief Justice Hughes, delivering the opinion of the Court, stated: It is no longer open to doubt that the liberty of the press and of speech is within the liberty safeguarded by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment [U.S.C.A.Const.] from invasion by state action. It was found impossible to conclude that this essential personal liberty of the citizen was left unprotected by the general guaranty of fundamental rights of person and property. The Chief Justice went on to state, If we cut through mere details of procedure, the operation and effect of the [Minnesota] statute in substance is that public authorities may bring the owner or publisher of a newspaper or periodical before a judge upon a charge of conducting a business of publishing scandalous and defamatory matter.    This is of the essence of censorship. The question is whether a statute authorizing such proceedings in restraint of publication is consistent with the conception of the liberty of the press as historically conceived and guaranteed. In determining the extent of the constitutional protection, it has been generally, if not universally, considered that it is the chief purpose of the guaranty to prevent previous restraints upon publication.    The Chief Justice also stated, Equally unavailing is the insistence that the statute is designed to prevent the circulation of scandal which tends to disturb the public peace and to provoke assaults and the commission of crime. Charges of reprehensible conduct, and in particular of official malfeasance, unquestionably create a public scandal, but the theory of the constitutional guaranty is that even a more serious public evil would be caused by authority to prevent publication. `To prohibit the intent to excite those unfavorable sentiments against those who administer the Government, is equivalent to a prohibition of the actual excitement of them; and to prohibit the actual excitement of them is equivalent to a prohibition of discussions having that tendency and effect; which, again, is equivalent to a protection of those who administer the Government, if they should at any time deserve the contempt or hatred of the people, against being exposed to it by free animadversions on their characters and conduct.' There is nothing new in the fact that charges of reprehensible conduct may create resentment and the disposition to resort to violent means of redress, but this well-understood tendency did not alter the determination to protect the press against censorship and restraint upon publication. As was said in New Yorker Staats-Zeitung v. Nolan, 89 N.J.Eq. 387, 388, 105 A. 72: `If the township may prevent the circulation of a newspaper for no reason other than that some of its inhabitants may violently disagree with it, and resent its circulation by resorting to physical violence, there is no limit to what may be prohibited.' The danger of violent reactions becomes greater with effective organization of defiant groups resenting exposure, and, if this consideration warranted legislative interference with the initial freedom of publication, the constitutional protection would be reduced to a mere form of words. In Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U.S. 233, 56 S.Ct. 444, 449, 80 L.Ed. 660, the Supreme Court held that the predominant purpose of the grant of immunity there invoked by the appellees, viz., the immunity granted by the Fourteenth Amendment, was    to preserve an untrammeled press as a vital source of public information. The Supreme Court thereupon proceeded to affirm the decree of the court below declaring unconstitutional a so-called licensing tax sought to be imposed upon the appellees by the State of Louisiana (La.Act No. 23, July 12, 1934). See also Dearborn Publishing Co. v. Fitzgerald, D.C., 271 F. 479. There is strong analogy between the right freely to publish the written or printed word and the right here in issue freely to speak in a public assembly. It may be argued that inflammatory words spoken before an audience may lead more quickly to violence than the printed word dispersed throughout a city. The question, however, is one of degree. Free speech and free assembly are commonplaces of democratic governments. They are unheard of under totalitarian regimes. In New York and in London, cities possessing populations as diverse as Jersey City, free speech and free assembly are allowed as a matter of course and speakers may there call even for the destruction of existing laws and governments and be received with tolerance or amusement. The rights of free speech and free assembly are essential parts of our American heritage. If the words used by a speaker are slanderous, the injured person may sue for damages in a court at law. If the speaker incites to riot or crime, the police may arrest him forthwith and the criminal processes of a democracy are available to punish him. In his concurring opinion in Whitney v. People of State of California, 274 U.S. 357, 47 S.Ct. 641, 71 L.Ed. 1095, in which the question before the court was one of punishment of the defendant, she having spoken in defiance of the Criminal Syndicalism Act of California (Statute 1919, c. 188, p. 281), Mr. Justice Brandeis stated at page 378, 47 S.Ct. at page 649, The fact that speech is likely to result in some violence or in destruction of property is not enough to justify its suppression. There must be the probability of serious injury to the State. Among free men the deterrents ordinarily to be applied to prevent crime are education and punishment for violations of the law, not abridgment of the rights of free speech and assembly. We can perceive no valid reason why the situation should be otherwise in Jersey City. Speakers may not be prohibited from speaking because they may say something which will lead to disorder. The function of the police at public meetings is not to prevent speakers from presenting their views but to preserve order while they speak. Otherwise, freedom of speech and assembly is destroyed. The interpretation of the rights of free speech and free assembly contended for by the appellants is shocking and places these rights in the hands of those who would destroy them. If the ill-intentioned threaten riot, speech may not be had. Under what conditions then would not the cry of riot be raised? Applying the appellants' doctrine literally, political speakers might not stump a city in an election if their opponents objected to what they had to say and threatened disorder. The strict application of such a rule would result eventually in the existence of but one political party as is now the case under totalitarian governments. The rule contended for by the appellants is scarcely one which commends itself to practical democratic government. Nor do we think that the appellants have followed such a rule. The record shows that the appellees and their sympathizers were not permitted to speak because they were deemed to be undesirables by the city authorities. The cries of impending riot raised by the appellants are not candid. In other words, Mayor Hague and his associates, reversing the usual procedure, troubled the waters in order to fish in them. There are of course both proper and improper times and places for holding public meetings. It is difficult to conceive a time when a public meeting might properly be held at Broad and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia or at Broadway and Forty-Second Street in New York City. If public meetings are to be held upon the streets of a city, they must be held at such places or such times as will permit them not to interfere unreasonably with the traffic and all that it implies. Such a rule, however, should not be too narrow a one, for if a public meeting is held, it is to be assumed that volume of traffic will be increased. If mass meetings are to be held in public parks, they must be held at such times and in such localities that they will not unduly interfere with the public recreation to which parks are dedicated. A statute or ordinance embodying these principles of regulation would in our opinion be constitutional. Much emphasis is placed by the appellants upon the decision of the Supreme Court in Davis v. Massachusetts, 167 U.S. 43, 17 S.Ct. 731, 42 L.Ed. 71, upon appeal from a decision of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Commonwealth v. Davis, reported in 162 Mass. 510, 39 N.E. 113, 26 L.R.A. 712, 44 Am.St.Rep. 389. In the cited case an ordinance of Boston forbade speaking on the Common without a permit from the city authorities. Davis desired to use the Common for religious services. He proceeded to speak without asking for a permit and was arrested and convicted. Upon the appeals that conviction was sustained. The Davis case, however, may be distinguished upon its circumstances from that at bar. As we have stated, Davis never applied for a permit to the city authorities. In the case at bar, the appellees sought permits in accordance with the terms of the Jersey City ordinance and permits were denied to them. Upon the question of the constitutionality of the ordinance now under discussion, however, it is in point and we cannot state otherwise. In our opinion, however, the rule laid down in the Davis case has been modified by the later decisions of the Supreme Court in Gitlow v. People of New York, 268 U.S. 652, 45 S.Ct. 625, 69 L.Ed. 1138; Fiske v. Kansas, 274 U.S. 380, 47 S.Ct. 655, 71 L. Ed. 1108; De Jonge v. Oregon, supra; Near v. Minnesota, supra, and Lovell v. City of Griffin, supra. In these later cases the Supreme Court declared the modern doctrine of protection of liberty of speech and assembly against state and municipal restrictions and made plain by judicial interpretation that the freedom of press and speech expressly protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution against Federal interference was also protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against interference by the States. Moreover, in the Davis case there is but small discussion of civil liberties. The Supreme Court took the position that    for the legislature    to forbid public speaking in a highway or public park is no more an infringement of the rights of a member of the public than for the owner of a private house to forbid it in his house. [167 U.S. 43, 17 S.Ct. 733.] This view of the powers of city authorities in respect to a public park, viz.. likening them to the powers of an individual over his own dwelling, does not seem consonant with the expressions of the Supreme Court upon germane subjects in a later period. On the contrary we think it cannot now be doubted that a city owns and its officials administer its streets and parks, not as private proprietors, but as trustees for the people. While streets and parks are to be administered primarily for the use of the people for travel and recreation it is equally certain that, consistent with such uses, the public places of a city must be open for the use of the people in order that they may exercise their rights of free speech and assembly. If this were not so it is obvious that these rights would be but empty forms for those unable to obtain suitable private places in which to exercise them.