Opinion ID: 6984420
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Applying the NTEU Standard

Text: Having decided that the stricter NTEU standard applies to the NYPD parade policy, we must evaluate the District Court’s conclusion that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment claims. Under NTEU, that evaluation involves a consideration of the parties’ respective interests. The District Court found that plaintiffs have a strong First Amendment interest in marching in uniform and behind their own banner. Noting “[n]umerous newspaper articles ... attesting] to the prominent role played by the LOA in speaking publicly about alleged discrimination in the police force,” the Court concluded that “[t]he message that plaintiffs seek to convey is not merely that they are proud to be Latino and police officers ..., but that they are willing to criticize the NYPD publicly for alleged discrimination.” LOA, 1999 WL 386753, at  & n. 4. On appeal, defendants challenge these findings with three arguments. First, they contend that plaintiffs’ interest in wearing police uniforms is not protected under the First Amendment at all because members of the public are unlikely to understand “that the LOA [is] concerned about discrimination and police misconduct merely from the fact that the LOA members [are] wearing uniforms.” Second, defendants argue that police officers’ ethnic pride is not a matter of public concern, as required for protection of government employee speech under Pickering and NTEU. Finally, defendants assert that plaintiffs’ interest in wearing police uniforms while marching is weak because they could just as easily communicate their intended messages without uniforms—for example, by handing out pamphlets or by carrying a banner that reads “LOA—Po-lice Officers Concerned About Discrimination and Police Misconduct.” In light of our view, discussed below, that defendants have an improperly selective policy concerning organizations that are permitted to wear uniforms during parades, we need determine only that the interests of plaintiffs in wearing the uniform meet minimal standards for triggering First Amendment concerns. Notwithstanding defendants’ arguments to the contrary, we find that they do. First, members of the public—specifically, the spectators at each of the parades— are more likely to discern and understand the LOA’s message about discrimination and misconduct in the NYPD if plaintiffs wear uniforms. To be sure, as defendants contend, spectators are unlikely to understand the LOA’s message merely from the fact that its members are in uniform. However, in conducting the necessary inquiry into “whether particular conduct possesses sufficient communicative elements to bring the First Amendment into play,” Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 404-05, 109 S.Ct. 2533, 105 L.Ed.2d 342 (1989), a court should not disregard “the context in which [that conduct] occurred.” Id. at 405, 109 S.Ct. 2533. Here, the context of plaintiffs’ conduct includes the significant publicity that the LOA has received for its positions on discrimination and misconduct in the NYPD. In view of that context, we think it is fair to infer that “the likelihood was great that [plaintiffs’] message would be understood by those who viewed it.” Id. at 404, 109 S.Ct. 2533 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Group of Boston, 515 U.S. 557, 569, 115 S.Ct. 2338, 132 L.Ed.2d 487 (1995) (“[A] narrow, succinctly articu-lable message is not a condition of constitutional protection.”). Second, plaintiffs’ interest in communicating ethnic pride as members of the NYPD is not necessarily a matter only of private concern. A statement is of public concern if, in light of “the content, form, and context of [that] statement, as revealed by the whole record,” it can be “fairly considered as relating to any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community.” Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 146, 103 S.Ct. 1684, 75 L.Ed.2d 708 (1983); see Lewis v. Cowen, 165 F.3d 154, 163-64 (2d Cir.1999), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 120 S.Ct. 70, — L.Ed.2d - (1999). The parades in which plaintiffs seek to march, each of which garners hundreds of thousands of spectators—both in person and on television—are themselves about ethnic pride and celebrating ethnic participation in the civic life of New York City. As the current President of the Puer-to Rican Day Parade stated before the thirty-fourth annual parade in 1991, “the philosophy of and reason for the [Puerto Rican Day Parade] ‘has been to succeed in making sure that every Puerto Rican feels proud of his culture.’ ” Marilyn Pérez-Cotto, Roots of the Parade, N.Y. Newsday, June 9, 1991 (Community Affairs Special Section), at 2 (emphasis added); see also 144 Cong. Rec. E1137, E1137 (June 16, 1998) (statement of Rep. Serrano) (referring to the Puerto Rican Day Parade as a “national event, in which thousands of individuals march along Fifth Avenue, in Manhattan, in celebration of our Puerto Rican heritage and our achievements in this nation”). Indeed, that the NYPD authorizes other groups such as the Hispanic Society to march in uniform is an acknowledgment that celebrating ethnic participation in the police force can be “fairly considered ... of ... concern to the community.” Connick, 461 U.S. at 146, 103 S.Ct. 1684. Finally, defendants’ own policies make it difficult for us to accept that plaintiffs could communicate the same message—or that they could communicate their message as effectively—without wearing their police uniforms. As defendants acknowledge by allowing other groups, including the Hispanic Society, to march in uniform, wearing the official uniform of the NYPD in a public parade like the Puerto Rican Day Parade has a unique expressive quality that would be lost were plaintiffs merely to hand out fliers or to carry a banner proclaiming their message explicitly. Under NTEU, we must affirm the judgment of the District Court unless defendants demonstrate that plaintiffs’ interests and the interests of plaintiffs’ potential audiences, see NTEU, 513 U.S. at 468, 115 S.Ct. 1003; Sanjour, 56 F.3d at 94, are outweighed by the expression’s “necessary impact on the actual operation of the Government,” NTEU, 513 U.S. at 468, 115 S.Ct. 1003 (internal quotation marks omitted). Before the District Court, defendants identified “two principal interests” served by the NYPD policy prohibiting an unrecognized group whose mission mirrors that of a recognized group from marching in uniform: first, the need of the NYPD to promote the appearance and reality of harmony within its ranks; and, second, the conservation of resources of the NYPD Ceremonial Unit, which reviews and musters marching officers to ensure that they are properly attired and appropriately behaved. LO A, 1999 WL 386753, at . The District Court concluded that these interests were insufficient, however, in large part because, in its view, defendants failed to demonstrate that such interests would actually be undermined by allowing plaintiffs to march. See id. at -6. Appropriately in our view, defendants do not seriously contest these conclusions on appeal. 9 Instead, defendants press two arguments allegedly not considered by the District Court: (1) that the NYPD has an absolute right to control the way its uniform and symbols are deployed; and (2) that spectators are likely to think that any group marching in uniform is speaking for the NYPD and that the NYPD has a right to control the content of its own expression. 10 In our view, neither argument satisfies defendants’ burden of justification. It is undisputedly true that the NYPD has a strong interest in maintaining control over how its uniform and symbols are used. Requiring NYPD officers to wear their uniforms while on duty makes them “more readily recognizable to the public, encourages esprit de corps, and subordinates personal preferences in favor of the overall group mission,” all of which furthers the police department’s mandate to promote public safety. INS v. Federal Labor Relations Auth., 855 F.2d 1454, 1466 (9th Cir.1988); cf. Kelley v. Johnson, 425 U.S. 238, 246, 96 S.Ct. 1440, 47 L.Ed.2d 708 (1976) (holding that deference is owed to police department grooming regulations under the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause based on such organizations’ “overall need for discipline, esprit de corps, and uniformity”). Correspondingly, prohibiting the unauthorized wearing of a police uniform prevents improper exercise of the powers granted to police officers and exploitation of the trust that wearing a police uniform is meant to inspire. Nevertheless, defendants’ interest in controlling the use of the NYPD uniform does not support the specific restriction at issue here — namely, the prohibition on plaintiffs’ marching in uniform behind their organizational banner in an ethnic pride parade when similarly situated organizations are allowed to march in such a manner. Whether or not defendants could constitutionally prohibit all fraternal organizations from marching in uniform — an issue we need not, and do not, decide — the fact of the matter is that the NYPD already permits at least 25 such organizations to march in uniform. Having allowed these organizations to use the NYPD uniform in such a manner over many decades, the NYPD cannot now deny plaintiffs the same privilege without demonstrating that their use of the uniform is both distinguishable from that of the various authorized organizations and “so threatening to the efficiency of the [NYPD] as to render the [restriction] a reasonable response to the threat.” NTEU, 513 U.S. at 473, 115 S.Ct. 1003. Although not directly on point, Schacht v. United States, 398 U.S. 58, 90 S.Ct. 1555, 26 L.Ed.2d 44 (1970), a case drawn to our attention by defendants, supports this conclusion. In Schacht, the Supreme Court reversed a conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 702, which makes it a crime for any person without authority to wear a uniform of the United States armed forces, when a separate provision permitted one to wear a military uniform “ ‘in a theatrical or motion-picture production ... if the portrayal does not tend to discredit [the ] armed force [s ].’ ” Schacht, 398 U.S. at 59-60, 90 S.Ct. 1555 (quoting 10 U.S.C. § 772(f)) (emphasis in Schacht). Although the Court acknowledged that § 702, “standing alone,” was a “valid statute on its face,” id. at 61, 90 S.Ct. 1555, it held that the exception for any portrayal that “does not tend to discredit [the] armed force[s]” impermissibly restricted expression on the basis of viewpoint. See id. at 62-63, 90 S.Ct. 1555. Here, as in Schacht, defendants may be constitutionally permitted to prohibit all fraternal organizations from marching in uniform. 11 But it does not follow from this premise that defendants have the seemingly lesser included authority to ban only some organizations from marching in uniform. Under Schacht, and under other Supreme Court cases involving selective prohibitions on expression, defendants’ selectivity must itself pass constitutional muster. Cf. City of Cincinnati v. Discovery Network, Inc., 507 U.S. 410, 425-28, 113 S.Ct. 1505, 123 L.Ed.2d 99 (1993) (holding that Cincinnati could not ban commercial newsracks from public property while allowing noncommercial news-racks, “even if ... the city might entirely prohibit the use of newsracks on public property”); Carey v. Brown, 447 U.S. 455, 465, 100 S.Ct. 2286, 65 L.Ed.2d 263 (1980) (invalidating a statute that prohibited residential picketing, except for labor picketing, in part because there is “nothing inherent in the nature of peaceful labor picketing that would make it any less disruptive of residential privacy than peaceful picketing on issues of broader social concern”); Police Dep’t v. Mosley, 408 U.S. 92, 94, 92 S.Ct. 2286, 33 L.Ed.2d 212 (1972) (invalidating a city ordinance prohibiting picketing in front of schools, except for labor picketing, on the ground that it “makes an impermissible distinction between labor picketing and other peaceful picketing”). Defendants’ general interest in controlling the use of its uniforms and other symbols does not, by itself, suffice. Nor are we persuaded by defendants’ second argument — that the public is likely to believe that the NYPD itself is speaking and that the NYPD has a right to control its own speech. To be sure, it is well settled that the government may regulate its own expression in ways that would be unconstitutional were a private party the speaker. See, e.g., Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of the Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819, 833, 115 S.Ct. 2510, 132 L.Ed.2d 700 (1995) (“[W]e have permitted the government to regulate the content of what is or is not expressed when it is the speaker or when it enlists private entities to convey its own message.”). But, as the Pickering and NTEU line of cases makes plain, not all speech by a government agent is “government speech” subject to such lenient analysis; indeed, even when a government agent represents that he is speaking as a representative of the government body, that agent may have independent rights under the First Amendment. See, e.g., Moore v. City of Wynnewood, 57 F.3d 924, 933-34 (10th Cir.1995); cf. Zook v. Brown, 748 F.2d 1161, 1167 (7th Cir.1984) (“[T]he [Police] Department cannot maintain that it has an overriding interest in every conceivable public statement [an officer] might make, no matter what the context or content of the statement, simply because the [officer] identifies his office.”). In the present case, we decline to adopt defendants’ invitation to characterize plaintiffs’ expression as government speech subject to any and all regulation. Defendants raise the slippery-slope argument that if they are compelled by the First Amendment to permit the LAO to march, then they would a fortiori be compelled to “allow police officers to march in uniform with any organization whatsoever, including the Ku Klux Klan or the Nazi Party.” But whether or not defendants could, consistent with the First Amendment, prohibit police officers from marching in uniform with a group like the Ku Klux Klan — an issue we need not, and do not, decide today — the mere possibility that such a situation might arise does not justify prohibiting plaintiffs themselves from marching in uniform behind the LAO banner in the parades at issue here. In short, defendants have failed to satisfy their burden of showing that plaintiffs’ expression specifically would have an impact on the actual operation of government. In fact, by their own conduct, defendants have proved the exact opposite, for, throughout most of this dispute, defendants have justified their prohibition of the LOA marching in uniform on the sole ground that its message is duplicative of the Hispanic Society’s message. The NYPD, having allowed the Hispanic Society to march in uniform and behind its banner, cannot now contend that allowing the LOA to do the same would have a detrimental effect on its actual operations.