Opinion ID: 2067743
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The United States Capitol Building

Text: Finally, we affirm the convictions of appellants for crossing the police line outside the Capitol Building, although the question of whether that measure trenched too closely on protected activity is a closer one. Captain Lloyd testified that on September 26 a group of the demonstrators who had assembled in the Upper Senate Park left that area and marched westbound on Constitution Avenue down the hill, then turned left on First Street, N.W. and moved south toward the west front of the Capitol Building. When the police set up a police line to stop [the] demonstrators from going too far [toward] the Capitol where [the group] could interfere with other activities of the Capitol, the marchers l[eft] the area and continued walking south across the west front until they reached the Maryland Avenue walkway leading to the Capitol Building. As they ascended the walkway, the police set up a second line after having offered the marchers (on recommendation of on-scene attorneys from the General Counsel's Office) a new permit to demonstrate on the [grassy area] on the west front, an offer the demonstrators spurned. Lloyd ordered the second police line in order to prevent the marchers from getting close to the Capitol for safety reasons and ... to let the Congress complete their mission. The group of demonstrators numbered from 50 to 100, [9] who were chanting and singing and carrying a coffin, but were peaceful. The second police line was set up [p]robably 100 yards from the Capitol Building and was designed to bar access to the narrow west terrace of the Capitol, an area the police also wished to keep clear for evacuation routes from the building. [10] Another reason for the police line was simply that the marchers had exceeded the bounds of their authorized assembly and were now engaged in demonstration activity... without a permit. When some fifteen marchers crossed through the police line, they were arrested. In Abney, supra, this court recognized that the government's interest in protect[ing] the perimeters of the Capitol Building is a substantial one when circumstances so dictate. 616 A.2d at 860. The special circumstances in Abney were increased security concerns created by the [then] Persian Gulf crisis and potential threats of terrorist activities as a result of it, id. at 857, and we accordingly sustained, against an as-applied First Amendment challenge, an interim regulation by the Capitol Police that effectively barred all expressive activity on or near the Capitol Building steps except for nearby grassy-area locations. See id. at 858-62. This, we said, served the valid governmental interest of restricting the access of all individuals to a specific perimeter during the Gulf War crisis in order to monitor and control potential threats to the security of the building and its users, as well as to keep[] evacuation routes clear. Id. at 861, 862. Although the District does not point out the fact, it is evident to any observer that the Capitol Police have likewise adopted, and employ, enhanced security measures around the perimeter of the Capitol Building (indeed, around the entire U.S. Capitol complex) since the events of September 11, 2001. No one can reasonably dispute the legitimacy of such measures in general, and appellants do not do so. They argue, however, that the police action in this case amounted to establishment of a 100-yard (or football field length) cordon around the entire Capitol Building within which even peaceful demonstrations are banned, and that the justifications offered by Captain Lloydunconfirmed by any police regulations or general orders offered into evidencefor barring their movement as protestors in that area are too weak to support so broad a restriction on First Amendment activity. We are not shy to say that the challenged police line gives rise to constitutional concern. First, as indicated, although Captain Lloyd explained his decision to order the police line, the prosecution did not present the trial court with any regulation announcing a general policy of the Capitol Police to bar demonstrative activity within a broad perimeter of the Capitol Building of the kind drawn here. The presence of such a regulation or general order has been deemed important in the analogous context of prosecutions for unlawful entry (or refusal to leave on demand), where the court has required some additional specific factor supporting an official's order to leave, and has found it in general orders such as the proscription we upheld in Abney. 616 A.2d at 859 (internal citation omitted). Furthermore, as recently as 2002, the federal Circuit Court struck down as unconstitutional a Capitol Police Board regulation banning all leafleting and other demonstration activit[ies] on the sidewalk at the foot of the House and Senate steps on the East Front of the Capitol Building, holding that no part of the ban is narrowly tailored to further a significant governmental purpose. Lederman, supra, 351 U.S.App. D.C. at 389, 291 F.3d at 39. [11] Appellants argue, with some force, that if a ban against peaceful protests on the sidewalk at the foot of the Capitol Building steps is constitutionally infirm, then the police action in refusing to let them carry a peaceful protest closer to the Capitol Building than 100 yards similarly cannot be said to be a narrowly tailored restriction, and that they were thus free to ignore it without fear of criminal prosecution. We conclude, nevertheless, that the police line was a lawful restriction on First Amendment rights in the circumstances of this case. Viewed in its context, appellants' procession was one of three more or less simultaneous actions by sizeable groups of protesters who had ignored the limits of the permit they had received to demonstrate in Upper Senate Park. As we have seen, one group carried their protest into the Hart Building and a second group appeared intent on a similar demonstration inside the Russell Building. The police thus had reason to believe that the third group too plannedin appellant Barber's word in his brief on appealto access the Capitol Building as the best means of disseminating their message. This supposition that appellants would not be content to remain outside the building was strengthened when they rejected the offer of police (and government attorneys) on the scene to let them demonstrate nearer the Capitol Building than their original permit had allowed. Although it was not the subject of much testimony at trial, the Capitol Police have adopted a content-neutral permit process allowing demonstration activity on the Capitol grounds subject to time, place and manner limitations. See U.S. CAPITOL POLICE, CONDUCTING AN EVENT ON UNITED STATES CAPITOL GROUNDS, http://www.us capitolpolice.gov/special_events/ guidelines_app_page.pdf (revised June 2009). Appellants availed themselves of this process initially; they did not, that is to say, challenge ex ante as an unconstitutional prior restraint the geographical limitations placed on their permission to assemble. Indeed, considering the testimony of one defendant at trial that all the protesters wished to do outside the Capitol Building was lay a coffin on the west front steps as a symbolic gesture, it is not apparent that they would have been denied a permit for that activity had they applied for it in advance. But, instead, what the Capitol Police faced was a procession of up to 100 persons, the end-point of whose march they could not be sure of and whose actions of carrying a coffin and singing and chanting they could reasonably believe would take the marchers into the interior of the Capitolthe Rotunda, if not furtherwhere the resultant disruption would foreseeably exceed the limits of the so-called tourist standard. See Wheelock, supra, 552 A.2d at 508. ([A]ppellants' conduct cannot constitute the basis for penalizing the exercise of their constitutional rights unless it interfered with the rights of others to a greater degree than tourists do.) (internal citation omitted). The issue thus resolves itself, in our view, to whether the Capitol Police were bound to adopt less restrictive measures than they did in blocking appellants' advance by establishing the police line at, say, twenty yards from the Capitol Building or at the foot or the top of the building steps. The trial judge believed that this decision must be left to the reasonable judgment of the officers on the scene, and we agree. As we stated in Abney, supra, [t]he idea that courts should ... second-guess[] the responsible authorities about how a legitimate governmental interest might have been achieved better has been rejected explicitly by the Supreme Court. 616 A.2d at 860 (citing Clark v. Cmty. for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288, 299, 104 S.Ct. 3065, 82 L.Ed.2d 221 (1984)); see also Shiel v. United States, 515 A.2d 405, 408 (D.C.1986) (Even if a more appropriate response to the situation could have been formulated, ... the validity of the... order does not turn on a judge's agreement with the responsible decisionmaker concerning the most appropriate method for promoting significant government interests.) (internal citation and quotation marks omitted). In sum, the judgment of the police officers that appellants' progression, as part of a sizeable group of demonstrators whose actions could foreseeably disrupt the congressional business, should be blocked at the point the police selected was a reasonable limitation that did not unduly restrict their right to disseminate their message. This case is not Lederman, supra, where the police applied a uniform ban to a lone visitor [and leafletter] to the Capitol Grounds, 351 U.S.App. D.C. at 389, 291 F.3d at 39, and had in place no permit process authorizing demonstrations on the grounds subject to reasonable size and other limitations. Id. at 396, 291 F.3d at 46. Appellants' convictions for crossing the police line outside the Capitol Building must stand. Affirmed. RUIZ, Associate Judge, dissenting in part. I would reverse the conviction for unlawful assembly on the steps of the Rayburn House Office Building because binding precedent requires that the government prove not only that the protesters have incommoded or obstructed the entrance to the building, but also that they have engaged in, or threatened, a breach of the peace. See Adams v. United States, 256 A.2d 563, 564 (D.C. 1969) (citing Williams v. District of Columbia, 136 U.S.App. D.C. 56, 64, 419 F.2d 638, 646 (1969)). Appellants were not charged with breaching the peace, [1] the government did not present evidence of breach of the peace, and the trial court made no such finding. Rather, and as the majority acknowledges, the trial judge noted that there was no contrary evidence to the assertion that it was a peaceful demonstration ... respectfully carried out as a means of expression. The judge found that the appellants' protest clearly block[ed] a series of doors [on the Independence Avenue side of the Rayburn Building], 70 percent, even though it doesn't physically prevent anyone from walking in, does incommode. Again there's no question that those who were arrested were there and were in front of the doorways and didn't leave when they were instructed to. So the... question is this; was this a violation of the statute [that] could pass constitutional scrutiny? And in the court's view it was; clearly they could seek to keep the access clear. The presence of the coffins was not the subject of arrest. It was those lying up in the, right at the entry level. And that does strike me as an area that police could reasonably seek to keep clear. And so I find these defendants guilty. The evidence adduced at trial showed that some of the protesters, [a]pproximately 20 or so, according to Captain Thomas Lloyd, were lying close to the entrance of the building. As a result, he testified, although a couple persons were successful in getting into the building, [m]ost, the other people did choose to go to another entrance. Captain Lloyd testified that he didn't physically see somebody approach [the entrance to the building] and who was unsuccessful. I did see people avoid the area based on the people line, you know, along the doorways. Some persons entering or leaving the Rayburn building had to walk over or hop over the protesters who were lying down pretending to be casualties of war, with sheets over them. The trial judge explicitly commented that there had been no breach of the peace, stating that one of the things that has characterized these cases is that clearly everyone involved was conducting themselves with courtesy and respect for each other which maximizes the value of the speech and the demonstration and minimizes the relevant conflict. In my opinion, under circumstances where there has been no actual or threatened breach of the peace, the conviction cannot stand. [2] What the evidence here shows, consistent with the trial judge's remarks, is that appellants' war protest was taken in stride by the people entering and leaving the Rayburn Building, who went about their business by, at most, making slight alterations such as by walking over the demonstrators or choosing to use another entrance. That this was so is not surprising because notwithstanding the belief expressed by Captain Lloyd that police intervention was necessary to let Congress complete their mission, the mission of members of Congress and of many persons who visit the Capitol routinely includes intense and sometimes even heated dialogue about issues of policy that affect the Nation. Whether our country should be at war is one of the issues that historically has compelled citizens to petition the Congress and mount demonstrations in and around the Capitol. In Williams, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia interpreted the section of the disorderly conduct statute which makes it unlawful for any person... to curse, swear, or make use of any profane language or indecent or obscene words, or engage in any disorderly conduct, in any street.... D.C.Code § 22-1307 (2001), formerly D.C.Code § 22-1107 (1981); [3] see Williams, 136 U.S.App. D.C. at 59, 419 F.2d at 641. Because of the serious constitutional problems posed by a notably broad statute regulating speech, Williams, 136 U.S.App. D.C. at 62, 419 F.2d at 644, the court held that the statute could be validly applied only if it were construed to require something more than simply the utterance of profane or obscene language in a public place. Id. at 63, 419 F.2d at 645. The something more, was the added requirement that the objectionable language be spoken in circumstances which threaten a breach of the peace. Id. at 64, 419 F.2d at 646. The majority distinguishes Williams on the ground that it involved pure speech, and not conducta distinction that finds validity in First Amendment jurisprudence. See Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 559, 564, 85 S.Ct. 476, 13 L.Ed.2d 487 (1965) (noting that the fact that free speech is intermingled with [regulated] conduct does not bring with it constitutional protection). But that distinction was made untenable by this court's decision in Adams, which, following Williams, also narrowly interpreted the specific section of the statute at issue here, which makes it unlawful to congregate and assemble in any street, ... or in or around any public building, ... and engage in loud and boisterous talking or other disorderly conduct, ... or to crowd, obstruct or incommode, the free use of any such street, ... or the free entrance into any public or private building.... [4] D.C.Code § 22-1307; see Adams, 256 A.2d at 564. In Adams, the court did not refer to the defendants' actions as an exercise of the right to free speech as there was in Williams ; rather, as far as can be gleaned from the sparse discussion, the court was addressing a situation where defendants were congregat[ing] and assembl[ing] on a public street and crowd[ing], obstruct[ing] or incommod[ing] the free use of such street. 256 A.2d at 564. In my view, the decision in Adams controls the outcome in this case, and requires reversal of appellants' convictions relating to the demonstration on the steps of the Rayburn House Office Building. Even if Adams could be meaningfully distinguishedand I do not believe that it can bethe majority's attempt at doing so causes further concern. The purpose and place of appellants' conduct are critical. Unlike in Adams, where there is no suggestion that the location of the street that was blocked, or the circumstances surrounding the obstruction, were in any way related to expressive conduct, whatever incommoding occurred here took place at the Nation's principal public forum, and was incidental to a public display of expressive conduct (political theater) intended for members of and visitors to the United States Congress. See Lederman v. United States, 351 U.S.App. D.C. 386, 391-94, 291 F.3d 36, 41-44 (2002) (recognizing that areas surrounding the Capitol are traditional public fora). The majority's attempt to distinguish Adams on the ground that what concerned the court there was the possible application of the disorderly conduct statute to punish students or sightseers who innocently congregate and assemble on a public street even if they do so in such a manner as to crowd, obstruct, or incommode the public's use, 256 A.2d at 565, means that police action that could be justified as neutral regulation of conduct is being unequally applied to persons exercising their First Amendment rights, but not to tourists. That, it is clear, the District may not do, whether the distinction is explicitly in the language of the statute, or in a gloss supplied by court interpretation, or a practice employed by regulatory authorities. See Wheelock v. United States, 552 A.2d 503, 508 (D.C. 1988) (Appellants' conduct cannot constitute the basis for penalizing the exercise of their constitutional rights unless it interfered with the rights of others to a greater degree than tourists do.); Cox, 379 U.S. at 557, 85 S.Ct. 453 (The pervasive restraint on freedom of discussion by the practice of authorities under the statute is not any less effective than a statute expressly permitting such selective enforcement.); see also Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703, 732, 120 S.Ct. 2480, 147 L.Ed.2d 597 (2000) (A statute can be impermissibly vague ... if it authorizes or even encourages arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.). Because we are bound, as a division, to follow our Adams precedent, see M.A.P. v. Ryan, 285 A.2d 310, 312 (D.C.1971), I would reverse appellants' conviction based on their demonstration on the steps of the Rayburn House Office Building. If the full court wishes to reexamine the question, it may do so en banc.