Opinion ID: 1774411
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Does the Ordinance Violate the Free Speech and Assembly Provisions of the State and Federal Constitutions?[16]

Text: In this case the City of Baton Rouge has charged Ross with remaining in a public place and intentionally soliciting another to engage in illegal drug activities. In the course of his overbreadth challenge Ross argues that the ordinance is unconstitutional insofar as it penalizes a number of constitutionally protected activities. As a general rule, the First Amendment [of the federal Constitution and Article I, §§ 7 and 9 of the Louisiana Constitution of 1974] provide that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content. DeSalvo v. State, 624 So.2d 897, 899 (La. 1993), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 114 S.Ct. 1067, 127 L.Ed.2d 386 (1994), citing Police Dep't of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U.S. 92, 92 S.Ct. 2286, 33 L.Ed.2d 212 (1972). However, there are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem. Cinel, supra, at 312, quoting Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 571-572, 62 S.Ct. 766, 769, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942). Overbreadth analysis exists because, in cases where the point of demarcation between regulation of protected and unprotected speech is hazy, the risk that arbitrary, vindictive, or selective enforcement of the provision may have a chilling effect upon rights of speech and assembly warrants an exception to the general rule that courts review legislative acts only as applied to the parties before them. [17] Lawrence Tribe, American Constitutional Law, Pp. 1022-1023 (2d ed. 1988). See also Secretary of State of Maryland v. Joseph H. Munson Co., Inc., 467 U.S. 947, 965, 104 S.Ct. 2839, 2851-2852, 81 L.Ed.2d 786 (1984) (overbreadth appropriate where there is no core of easily identifiable and constitutionally proscribable conduct that the statute prohibits). There are two salient aspects to an overbreadth challenge. The first is that it is a facial challenge; a reviewing court does not examine the challenged statute or ordinance as applied to the parties before it, but rather tests the constitutionality of the legislation in terms of its potential applications. Geoffrey R. Stone et alia, Constitutional Law, P. 1039-1040 (1986). Thus, overbreadth allows attacks on overly broad statutes with no requirement that the person making the attack demonstrate that his own conduct could not be regulated by a statute drawn with the requisite specificity. Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479, 486, 85 S.Ct. 1116, 1121, 14 L.Ed.2d 22 (1965). See also NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 432, 83 S.Ct. 328, 338-339, 9 L.Ed.2d 405 (1963); Note, The First Amendment Overbreadth Doctrine, 83 Har.L.Rev. 844 (1970). The second, and far more significant, aspect of the overbreadth doctrine is that, if applicable, the offensive legislation is voided on its face, i.e. in its entirety, regardless of whether constitutional applications of the legislation exist. See Board of Airport Comm'ners v. Jews for Jesus, 482 U.S. 569, 107 S.Ct. 2568, 96 L.Ed.2d 500 (1987); City of Houston, Texas, supra . As has already been noted, the jurisprudence reveals a bifurcation between speech which is protected from governmental regulation and speech which may legitimately be limited or even prohibited, i.e. unprotected speech. Ross argues that the ordinance is unconstitutional because criminal liability for drug loitering is indistinguishable from and in fact defined in terms of constitutionally protected conduct. City of Tacoma, supra, 827 P.2d at 1381. The defendant's argument dissipates in the light of a proper construction of the ordinance. [T]he mere fact that one can conceive of some impermissible applications of a statute is not sufficient to render it susceptible to an overbreadth challenge; rather, the potentially impermissible applications of a challenged statute or ordinance must be substantial when compared to the activities which it may properly proscribe. Los Angeles City Council v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 800, 104 S.Ct. 2118, 2126, 80 L.Ed.2d 772 (1984). See also Broadrick, supra, at 615-616, 93 S.Ct. at 2917. When the ordinance is viewed in light of the construction placed upon it, I find that any overbreadth is insubstantial. By requiring specific intent and overt acts, the ordinance does not then reach into the arena of constitutionally protected First Amendment conduct. City of Tacoma, supra, 827 P.2d at 1384. The ordinance as construed simply does not reach constitutionally protected activity. Id, at 1380. The ordinance prohibits any speech or conduct which the speaker engages in with the specific intent to induce others to engage in illegal drug activities. This category of speech is clearly unprotected. See Giboney v. Empire Storage & Ice Co., 336 U.S. 490, 502, 69 S.Ct. 684, 691, 93 L.Ed. 834 (1950) ([i]t has never been deemed an abridgement of freedom of speech ... to make a course of conduct illegal merely because it was conduct in part initiated, evidenced, or carried out by means of language, either spoken, written, or printed). Criminal speech and conduct such as this may be prohibited even though intertwined with expression and association. Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 559, 563, 85 S.Ct. 476, 480, 13 L.Ed.2d 487 (1965). While I clearly endorse the propriety of the ordinance's purpose, I nonetheless recognize that since the ordinance addresses itself to the communicative impact of public speech and assembly there is bound to be some incidental impact upon protected speech and assembly. The test for determining the constitutionality of such a regulation is that set out in United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 376, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 1679, 20 L.Ed.2d 672 (1968), reh'g denied, 393 U.S. 900, 89 S.Ct. 63, 21 L.Ed.2d 188 (1969): [18] we think it clear that a government regulation is sufficiently justified if it is within the constitutional power of the Government; if it furthers an important or substantial governmental interest; if the governmental interest is unrelated to the suppression of free expression; and if the incidental restriction on alleged First Amendment freedoms is no greater than is essential to the furtherance of that interest.... In this case, the ordinance's goal is the eradication of drug trafficking from the public places of Baton Rouge, and I find that interdicting drug distribution networks through the criminalization of public solicitation of illegal drug activities is a historically accepted and reasonable exercise of the City-Parish's delegated police power. In particular, I find the words of the New York Supreme Court of Appeals, written in 1969, persuasive on this point: It appears that the Legislature in enacting the statute before us sought to prevent generally idle and dissolute persons engaged in the unlawful traffic of narcotics, from drawing together for that purpose in places frequented by other citizens, thereby endangering public health, morals, and tranquility. This protection of innocent citizens from drug users is a very crucial problem. As has recently been pointed out by several newspaper articles, in some of our poorer urban areas where drug use is high, innocent citizens are often beaten, robbed, and even murdered by drug addicts. It is completely reasonable and proper for the Legislature to protect these citizens from accidentally stumbling into the midst of such miscreants in the common areas.... People v. Pagnotta, 25 N.Y.2d 333, 305 N.Y.S.2d 484, 489, 253 N.E.2d 202, 206 (1969) ( citations omitted ). See also Bykofsky, supra, 401 F.Supp. at 1258 ([t]he Borough has a legitimate interest in the reasonable control of its streets). These sentiments are at least as valid now as they were in 1969. Based upon the foregoing, I conclude that the City of Baton Rouge has a substantial, if not compelling, interest in combatting drug trafficking, and that the ordinance is a constitutionally proper way for it to attack this problem. With the underlying purpose of the ordinance in mind, I find that the City's design does not include the deliberate suppression of any protected expression. Finally, I find that the ordinance, which penalizes only those who engage in speech or conduct specifically designed to procure others for illegal drug activity, is narrowly tailored to prohibit only the targeted unlawful conduct, and that therefore any collateral and/or marginal impact upon legitimate expression is no greater than required to achieve the ordinance's intended goal. City of Houston, supra, at 465, 107 S.Ct. at 2511. For these reasons, I adjudge that the ordinance as applied to Shelton Ross is not in violation of Article I, §§ 7 and 9 of the Louisiana Constitution of 1974, or the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. It must be noted that when an ordinance such as this is challenged on overbreadth grounds, the proper procedure is to evaluate the constitutionality of the legislation based upon its effective reach as construed, i.e. to look at the speech or conduct actually penalized. The police may arrest a murderer while he is standing on a soap box in a public forum making a political speech to a peacefully assembled political organization; however, it simply does not follow from this that the statute forbidding murder in any way infringes upon freedoms of speech and assembly. The gist of the defendant's arguments in this case are directed not at the scope of the ordinance and its impact upon free expression, the proper subject of overbreadth analysis, but rather to questions of probable cause and evidentiary sufficiency which implicate constitutional provisions unrelated to Article I, §§ 7 and 9 of the Louisiana Constitution of 1974 and the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. I recognize that the nature of criminal solicitation in particular and inchoate offenses in general is such that there may be more opportunity for abuse in the enforcement of such an ordinance. [19] However, the fact that a law may be improperly applied or even abused does not render it constitutionally invalid. City of Milwaukee, supra, 291 N.W.2d at 458. Rather, any contention that constitutional privacy or due process guarantees have been violated can be adequately dealt with in the course of prosecution of individual cases on their individual facts; these concerns are not an adequate predicate for finding that the [ordinance] is invalid on its face. [20] Superior Court, supra, 758 P.2d at 1054. Ross also alleged that subsection (c) [21] of the ordinance impermissibly criminalizes a number of innocent activities. However, the express language of that subsection reveals that the enumerated activities are not in themselves proscribed, but are merely [a]mong the circumstances which may be considered in determining whether [a] person intends to solicit others for illegal drug activities. This subsection is not a penal provision; instead, by its own language it merely creates guidelines to assist municipal law enforcement personnel in their inquiries. [22] The focus of overbreadth is the extent to which the challenged statute or ordinance proscribes constitutionally protected expression; since subsection (c) merely clarifies the penal provision of subsection (b) but does not itself forbid protected speech or conduct, I find subsection (c) irrelevant to the defendant's overbreadth challenge. I conclude that the ordinance is not unconstitutionally overbroad since it does not impermissibly impinge upon rights of free expression guaranteed by the Louisiana and federal constitutions. In my opinion, the trial court erred when it determined otherwise.