Opinion ID: 195018
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Underinclusiveness

Text: -26- While the MSTA appeal foreclosed present overbreadth claims, appellants raise other claims which in our view, the appeal has not foreclosed. We turn to these. Facial First Amendment challenge is allowed to statutes burdening speech that are so grossly underinclusive as to cast doubt on the compelling nature of the state's asserted interest. See R.A.V., 112 S. Ct. at 2547 (facially invalidating ordinance that applied only to fighting words that provoke violence on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender.); Florida Star v. B.J.F., 491 U.S. 524, 541-42 (1989) (Scalia, J., concurring) (a law cannot be regarded as protecting an interest 'of the highest order,' and thus justifying a restriction on truthful speech, when it leaves appreciable damage to that supposedly vital interest unprohibited.); FCC v. League of Women Voters, 468 U.S. 364, 396 (1984) (patent . . . underinclusiveness . . . undermines the likelihood of a genuine [governmental] interest).15 As already discussed, the jurisdictional statement in MSTA required the Supreme Court to consider whether the 15. A statute's underinclusiveness also indicates that the government is not, in fact, serving the proffered compelling interest. Florida Star, 491 U.S. at 540 (facial underinclusiveness of [statute] raises serious doubts about whether Florida is, in fact, serving, with this statute, the significant interests which [the State] invokes); Women Voters, 468 U.S. at 396 (because statute is underinclusive, it provides only ineffective or remote support for the government's purpose); Carey v. Brown, 447 U.S. 455, 465 (1980) (nothing in the content-based labor-nonlabor distinction has any bearing whatsoever on privacy). -27- Maine Act was supported by a compelling state interest. Plaintiffs in the present case, however, assert that even if the version of the Maine Act upheld by the Maine Law Court in MSTA was supported by a compelling state interest, the Supreme Court's summary dismissal of MSTA is no longer binding precedent because the Maine Legislature has enacted and has later repealed or let expire, various exceptions to the Act's prohibition on solicitation that benefits law enforcement. According to plaintiffs, the Legislature's former enactment of these now-defunct exceptions permanently undermined the Act's compelling interest.16 We disagree. We know of no precedent for invalidating a statute based on repealed exceptions: the Maine legislature, having restored the statute something close to its original form, is entitled to the same respect afforded to its original judgment. While we reject plaintiffs' assertion that repealed exceptions to the Act prevent Maine from ever again having a compelling interest in prohibiting solicitation beneficial to law enforcement, we take more seriously plaintiffs' further contention that extant exceptions to the Act undermine the State's assertion of a compelling state interest. Plaintiffs identify three such exceptions, said to make the Act unconstitutionally underinclusive: (1) The Act permits 16. As the magistrate judge wrote in his Recommended Decision: the proverbial egg cannot be unscrambled. -28- solicitations that intangibly benefit the police, e.g., solicitations by police officers for a public charity; (2) the Act permits solicitations that benefit state officials other than law enforcement officers; and (3) The Act permits solicitations on behalf of law enforcement officers campaigning for public office. While the latter distinctions were present in the statute upheld in MSTA, the issue of the Act's alleged underinclusiveness and its effect on the compelling state interest supporting the Act were not raised in either the Maine courts or in the jurisdictional statement to the Supreme Court.17 Because the issue of the Act's purported underinclusiveness was not presented to the Supreme Court in MSTA, the Supreme Court's summary dismissal of that case is not binding precedent on this issue. See Illinois State Bd. of Elections, 440 U.S. at 183 (Questions which merely lurk in the record are not resolved, and no resolution of them may be inferred.) (internal quotation omitted). The State contends that the Act's purported underinclusiveness does not render it unconstitutional. The State relies, as did the district court, on the Hatch Act cases, see, e.g., United States Civil Serv. Comm'n v. 17. While the Maine Law Court in MSTA did consider the repealed Act's exception for game wardens, finding no justification for differentiating in treatment between M.S.T.A. and the game wardens, the statutory exceptions challenged by plaintiffs here either were not yet enacted when the Supreme Court summarily dismissed MSTA, or were not challenged in that case. -29- National Ass'n of Letter Carriers, 413 U.S. 548, 556 (1973); United Pub. Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75, 100 (1947), for the proposition that a legislature need not address an entire social problem at one time. In the Hatch Act cases, the Supreme Court upheld restrictions on partisan political activity by civil servants even though other types of political activity were not similarly restricted. But, while helpful to some degree, the Hatch Act cases are not on all fours. The Hatch Act cases rest upon the notion that the government has special rights to restrict partisan political speech of its employees and on its property. Women Voters, 468 U.S. at 401 n.27; see International Soc. for Krishna Consciousness, Inc. v. Lee, 112 S. Ct. 2701, 2705 (Where the government is acting as a proprietor, managing its internal operations, rather than acting as a lawmaker with power to regulate or license, its action will not be subjected to the heightened review to which its actions as a lawmaker may be subject.). The Hatch Act cases are inapplicable to the question of whether a statute is unconstitutionally underinclusive when that statute, like the Maine Act at issue here, restricts the speech of the general citizenry as well as that of public employees. When a content-based regulation restricts both the speech of public employees and the general citizenry, it simply cannot be defended on the ground that partial -30- prohibitions may effect partial relief. Florida Star, 491 U.S. at 540. The Supreme Court explained why a statute's content-based underinclusiveness is objectionable when First Amendment rights are at stake, in Erznoznik v. Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205 (1975): This Court frequently has upheld underinclusive classifications on the sound theory that a legislature may deal with one part of a problem without addressing all of it. See, e.g., Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U.S. 483, 488- 489 (1955). This presumption of statutory validity, however, has less force when a classification turns on the subject matter of expression. [A]bove all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content. Police Dept. of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U.S., at 95. Thus, under the Equal Protection Clause, not to mention the First Amendment itself, id., at 96, even a traffic regulation cannot discriminate on the basis of content unless there are clear reasons for the distinctions. Id. at 215. In order to avoid the conclusion under either the Equal Protection Clause or the First Amendment18 that the 18. When reviewing content-based distinctions, the Supreme Court has not differentiated the Equal Protection Clause from the First Amendment. R.A.V., 112 S. Ct. at 2544 n.4 (This Court . . . has occasionally fused the First Amendment into the Equal Protection Clause); Burson, 112 S. Ct. at 1850-52 n.3 (Under either a free-speech or equal-protection theory, a content-based regulation of political speech in a public forum is valid only if it can survive strict scrutiny.); Erznoznik, 422 U.S. at 215 (holding that under either the First Amendment or the Equal Protection Clause, there must be clear reasons for content-based distinctions); Mosley, 408 U.S. 92, 95 (1972) (Of course, the equal protection claim in this case is closely intertwined with First Amendment interests.); Harwin v. Goleta Water Dist., 953 F.2d 488, 490 -31- Maine Act is unconstitutionally underinclusive, the State must be able to point to clear reasons for the distinctions drawn by the Act. See Austin v. Michigan State Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 652, 666 (1990) (the press's unique societal role provides a compelling reason for the state to exempt media corporations from the scope of political expenditure limitations); Mosley, 408 U.S. at 100 (ordinance prohibiting all peaceful picketing other than labor picketing is unconstitutional absent showing that the former is clearly more disruptive); see also Cincinnati v. Discovery Network, Inc., 113 S. Ct. 1505, 1524 (1993) (Rehnquist, C.J., dissenting) (in noncommercial speech cases, the Court has refused to accept distinctions between restricted and nonrestricted speech when those distinctions bear no relationship to the interests asserted for regulating the speech in the first place); Fantasy Book Shop, Inc. v. City of Boston, 652 F.2d 1115, 1121 n.6 (1st Cir. 1981) (rejecting challenge of facial underinclusiveness because legislature could reasonably conclude that non-commercial amusements present sufficiently less likelihood of the harms sought to n.3 (9th Cir. 1991) (Under either [equal protection or first amendment] analysis, . . . independent justification of the discrimination is required.); News America Pub. v. FCC, 844 F.2d 800, 804 (D.C. Cir. 1988) (claim of underinclusiveness lies at the intersection of the First Amendment's protection of free speech and the Equal Protection Clause's requirement that government afford similar treatment to similarly situated persons). -32- be prevented to justify their differential treatment). The State's justifications for the Act's differential treatment must be carefully scrutinized. Carey, 447 U.S. at 461-62. Although the case at hand is close, we believe the State has articulated satisfactory explanations for the Act's differential treatment. To justify the exception in 3702-A permitting solicitations that only intangibly benefit the police, the State relies principally upon the following statement of legislative intent included in the 1991 amendments to the Act: The Legislature . . . finds that solicitations [by police] for charitable purposes unrelated to law enforcement activities are not inherently coercive because the person solicited will know that law enforcement agencies or officers do not gain any tangible benefit and, consequently, will not be concerned with who donates. Priv. & Spec. Laws 1991, Ch. 510, 5. We find this to be a supportable basis for the distinction. It is true that the State has provided no purported empirical evidence to back up that finding.19 The district court, in upholding the 19. Plaintiffs contend that by simply asserting without empirical evidence that solicitations tangibly benefiting police are inherently coercive, the State has: taken the effect of the statute and posited that effect as the State's interest. If accepted, this sort of circular defense can sidestep judicial review of almost any statute, because it makes all statutes look narrowly tailored. . . . Every -33- constitutionality of the Act, stated that it would overlook the lack of empirical evidence and defer to the legislative premise that these types of fundraising are different, since whether there is as much coercion in solicitations for charitable causes as for law enforcement purposes is a matter on which reasonable minds may differ. We agree that the lack of empirical evidence is not fatal. See Burson, 112 S. Ct. at 1856 (noting the difficulty of isolat[ing] the exact effect of [laws restricting certain speech at polling places] on voter intimidation and election fraud and suggesting that [s]uccessful voter intimidation and election fraud is successful precisely because it is difficult to detect); Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 434, 486 content-based discrimination could be upheld by simply observing that the State is anxious to regulate the designated speech. Simon & Schuster, 112 S. Ct. at 510 (quoting Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Fischetti, 916 F.2d 777, 785 (2d Cir. 1990) (Newman, J., dissenting)). Plaintiffs' reliance on Simon & Schuster is misplaced. In that case, New York argued that its Son-of-Sam law was supported by a compelling interest because it ensur[ed] that criminals do not profit from story-telling about their crimes before their victims have a meaningful opportunity to be compensated for their injuries. The Court rejected New York's argument that this narrow interest was compelling because the State could not explain why it should have any greater interest in compensating victims from the proceeds of such 'storytelling' than from any of the criminal's other assets. Id. By contrast, the State of Maine can and does explain why solicitations by police personnel for charitable purposes unrelated to law enforcement are not as inherently coercive as solicitations that tangibly benefit law enforcement officers, agencies or associations. -34- (1988) (noting that targeted residential picketing is inherently intrusive of residential property). While the Supreme Court has occasionally cited the lack of empirical evidence as a further ground for striking down a restriction on speech, see, e.g., Peel v. Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Comm'n, 496 U.S. 91, 106 (1990) (plurality) (Given the complete absence of any evidence of deception, Court rejects state's contention that attorney's advertising was actually misleading), the Court has never laid down a categorical rule requiring that empirical evidence be shown to support every statutory restriction on speech.20 A categorical requirement would be unwise, we think, given the difficulty of securing definitive empirical evidence for unquantifiable issues of this sort. The Maine Legislature's conclusion seems intuitively reasonable that solicitations even when made by law enforcement personnel for charitable purposes unrelated to law enforcement are not as inherently coercive as solicitations that tangibly benefit law enforcement officers, agencies or associations. Persons approached to contribute funds for the tangible benefit of law enforcement personnel, agencies or associations might well believe that 20. The Court has, however, required substantial support in the record or findings when rights of political expression and association are concerned. E.g., In re Primus, 436 U.S. 412, 434 n.8 (1978). -35- the officers would be more deeply offended by a refusal than by rejection of officers' requests for a donation to a charity entirely unrelated to law enforcement. The Legislature could reasonably conclude that [charitable solicitations] present sufficiently less likelihood of the harms sought to be prevented to justify their differential treatment. See Fantasy Book Shop, Inc., 652 F.2d at 1121 n.6. Plaintiffs' contention with respect to the Act's distinction between law enforcement officials and other types of public servants fares no better. The police occupy a unique role. They are empowered to enforce a wide array of criminal laws and to protect the property and lives of the general citizenry. To do this they are armed, given enhanced arrest powers, and given access to information networks and other tools denied to most citizens. Police necessarily have considerable on-the-spot authority of a discretionary sort whether to give or withhold a traffic ticket, to make an arrest, or to notice or disregard a violation. While evenhanded treatment is the ideal, officers may, and sometimes do, enforce laws in a less than neutral manner. For this reason, citizens and local businesses will try to stay on the good side of police, fearing whether or not correctly that a miffed police officer and his associates will retaliate, or will turn their backs when most needed. Hence, -36- the Maine Legislature could reasonably conclude that police solicitation has a special potential for coercion not present in solicitation by other officials. Plaintiffs' third example of the Act's purported underinclusiveness the exception for solicitations on behalf of law enforcement officers running for public office is also unavailing. As the district court properly recognized, law enforcement officers who run for electoral office, primarily county sheriffs, themselves have separate First Amendment interests. See Burson, 112 S. Ct. at 1850 ('the First Amendment 'has its fullest and most urgent application' to speech uttered during a campaign for political office') (quoting Eu v. San Francisco Democratic Comm., 489 U.S. 214, 223 (1989) (quoting Monitor Patriot Co. v. Roy, 401 U.S. 265, 272 (1971))). A rule prohibiting campaign fundraising by law enforcement personnel would effectively disqualify them from an office such as sheriff for, unless they were independently wealthy, they could easily be outspent by opponents who were not in law enforcement. Auburn II, 798 F. Supp. at 827. We, therefore, agree with the district court that the First Amendment right of law enforcement officers to engage in campaign speech provides a substantial justification for the Act's exemption of such speech from its prohibition on -37- solicitation.21 See Austin, 494 U.S. at 668 (media exemption from prohibition on corporations using general treasury funds to support state candidate elections ensures that the Act does not hinder or prevent the institutional press from reporting on, and publishing editorials about, newsworthy events). As the State can furnish clear reasons for the asserted exemptions from the Act's prohibitions, and the reasons are not only clear but rational, we hold that the Maine Act is not unconstitutionally underinclusive.