Opinion ID: 1238288
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Response to the Dissenters

Text: Although we have responded to specific points raised by the dissent throughout this opinion, we wish to address two broader concerns that we have with the various dissents. First, in order to bolster their arguments, both Chief Judge Kozinski and Judge Gould mischaracterize both the nature of the Center's rules and our analysis of those rules. Chief Judge Kozinski, for example, repeatedly suggests that the rules apply only to those performers who solicit money. See, e.g., Kozinski Dissent at 1063-64 (noting that the rules are intended to protect park-goers from overly aggressive street performers bent on increasing their own visibility and income); id. at 1067 ([S]treet performers like Berger are not merely citizens who wish to use the park as a forum for public expression or religious worship on an occasional basis; they are operating a business and earning a living from these activities.); id. at 1068 (The commercial aspects of the street performer trade, which my colleagues overlook, set up the dynamics that have given Seattle Center cause for concern.). That understanding of the rules is simply wrong. No such limitation appears in the Center's rules, nor has it been pro-pounded by the City. Instead, the permitting requirement applies, on its face, to all member[s] of the general public who engage[ ] in any performing art or the playing of any musical instrument, singing or vocalizing, Rule C.15. It does not distinguish between performers who seek funds and those who merely wish to entertain or to express an opinion through performance art. The City's captive audience rule goes even further. It applies to all park-goers, not just to street performers, and certainly not just to street performers who solicit funds. The City has not argued otherwise. The dissenters also imply that the rules are limited to repeat performers, see Kozinski Dissent at 1067, 1068, and to preventing unwelcome or harassing performances. See Gould Dissent at 1080. Once again, the scope of the rules at issue is not limited to these categories, nor has the City so interpreted them. The permitting requirement and passive solicitation rules apply to one-time performers and to Seattle Center regulars in equal measure. The sweeping captive audience rule applies to everyone (other than City employees and licensed concessionaires) at all times. In addition, none of the rules differentiate between benign, inoffensive conduct and aggressive, unwelcome acts. They simply deter or ban all relevant speech. We do not discount the City's interest in protecting patrons of the Seattle Center from browbeating and other hostile conduct. The problem is that the City, rather than tailoring its rules to curtail problematic behavior, imposed sweeping bans on expressive activity and implemented a broad registration requirement. It is, in large part, the overbreadth of the rules, an overbreadth the dissenters do not appear to recognize, that renders them constitutionally infirm. See Jews for Jesus, 482 U.S. at 574-76, 107 S.Ct. 2568. Chief Judge Kozinski also mischaracterizes, or perhaps misunderstands, key aspects of our opinion. For instance, he asserts that it is a wholly different matter to derive some sort of rule that prohibits or strongly discouragesregulation of speech by a single individual, regardless of the size of his expected audience or the disruption he may cause. Kozinski Dissent at 1072. The rule that we propose is precisely the opposite of what the Chief Judge suggests. One of the central deficiencies of the Center's permitting requirement is that it does not consider the size of a street performer's expected audience or the disruption he may cause. It applies to every member of the general public who wishes to perform, sing, or vocalize on the Center's grounds, irrespective of the size of their planned or actual audience. If, by contrast, the permitting requirement applied only to performers who intend to attract a crowd of a sufficiently large size (say 100 persons or more), the requirement might very well be constitutional. For this reason, Judge Kozinski's suggestion that our opinion would preclude a permit requirement for the famous civil rights leader who plans to hold a rally for half a million people at the Lincoln Memorial is absurd. Instead, the point is that the Center's permitting requirement is not limited to huge ralliesor even small, hundred person ones. Moreover, our conclusion that the Constitution prohibits the government from implementing a registration system that governs speech in a public forum and applies to groups as small as a single individual performing without an audience is neither new nor idiosyncratic. This circuit has repeatedly affirmed the principle that an advance notification requirement applicable to speech in a public forum must be limited to larger groups. See Long Beach Area Peace Network, 522 F.3d at 1032-33; Santa Monica Food Not Bombs, 450 F.3d at 1039; Grossman, 33 F.3d at 1206; City of Richmond, 743 F.2d at 1355; Rosen, 641 F.2d at 1247-48. Several other circuits have reached this same conclusion. See Cox v. City of Charleston, 416 F.3d 281, 285 (4th Cir.2005); American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee v. City of Dearborn, 418 F.3d 600, 608 (6th Cir.2005); Douglas v. Brownell, 88 F.3d 1511, 1524 (8th Cir.1996). The dissenters ignore this long line of authority, concluding simply that a rigid numerical rule will fail because it makes no account for the performance's effect on others. Kozinski Dissent at 1073. But, as we and several other appellate courts have noted, a numerical floor is necessary precisely because such a floor indicates that the government has properly tailored its permitting requirement to address the effect that a speaker will have on other users of a public space. We also reiterate that the City is free to enforce its existing rules, including its criminal statutes and traffic ordinances, against individual offenders. We do not hold, as Chief Judge Kozinski's other, equally silly, examples appear to suggest, see Kozinski Dissent at 1072-73, that the First Amendment exempts all individual speakers from regulation. If Yo-Yo Ma or Mr. Nez decided unilaterally to obstruct vehicle traffic, the government can, of course, prevent him from doing so by enforcing its vehicular codes. Similarly, Seattle Center officials can, pursuant to its existing rules, remove a street performer who is blocking pedestrian traffic or harassing parkgoers. But a permitting requirement that applies to a group as small as a single person and which governs speech activity in a public park ( not on a city street) is not necessary to promote the interests the City asserts in this case and is highly offensive to our constitutional values. Which leads to our secondand overridinggeneral concern with the approach of the dissenters: the dissents ignore, or at least discount, bedrock principles of First Amendment jurisprudence. Among these is the proposition that public parks are an especially important and protected forum for speech, even as compared to public streets. See Hague, 307 U.S. at 515, 59 S.Ct. 954; Grossman, 33 F.3d at 1204-05. Chief Judge Kozinski describes the Seattle Center as a cultural achievement, an enterprise, a multi-use facility, and the crown jewel of [Seattle's] civic enterprise. While accurate, these descriptions mask the Seattle Center's true identity: it is an 80-acre expanse of public land that includes twenty-three acres of outdoor, public park space. However unique the Seattle Center may be, it is, fundamentally, a public park. As such, regulations on speech within its boundaries warrant particularly close attention. The dissenters also disregard the fundamental premise that a law requiring a permit to engage in [individual] speech constitutes a dramatic departure from our national heritage and constitutional tradition, Watchtower Bible, 536 U.S. at 166, 122 S.Ct. 2080, because prior restraints on speech [like the City's permitting requirement]... are the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights. Nebraska Press Ass'n v. Stuart, 427 U.S. 539, 559, 96 S.Ct. 2791, 49 L.Ed.2d 683 (1976). Such restraints bear a heavy presumption against their constitutionality. Forsyth County, 505 U.S. at 130, 112 S.Ct. 2395. Without acknowledging the constitutionally suspect nature of prior restraints, the dissenters would uphold the permitting requirement on the weakest of rationales i.e., that the requirement helps the City identify and punish rule breakers. As already discussed at length, the City need not implement a broadly applicable prior restraint to achieve these objectives. Allowing such an intolerable infringement on First Amendment rights therefore simply cannot be countenanced.