Opinion ID: 718699
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Appropriate Level of Judicial Scrutiny

Text: 16 The government bears a particularly heavy burden in justifying viewpoint-based restrictions in designated public forums. Viewpoint discrimination is an egregious form of content discrimination. Rosenberger, --- U.S. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 2516. Content-based restrictions are subject to strict scrutiny. See United States v. Kokinda, 497 U.S. 720, 726-27, 110 S.Ct. 3115, 3119-20, 111 L.Ed.2d 571 (1990); Perry, 460 U.S. at 46, 103 S.Ct. at 955-56. Viewpoint-based restrictions receive even more critical judicial treatment. As the Supreme Court noted in Rosenberger: 17 The necessities of confining a forum to the limited and legitimate purposes for which it was created may justify the State in reserving it for certain groups or for the discussion of certain topics.... [I]n determining whether the State is acting to preserve the limits of the forum it has created so that the exclusion of a class of speech is legitimate, we have observed a distinction between, on the one hand, content discrimination, which may be permissible if it preserves the purposes of that limited forum, and, on the other hand, viewpoint discrimination, which is presumed impermissible when directed against speech otherwise within the forum's limitations. 18 --- U.S. at ---- - ----, 115 S.Ct. at 2516-2517 (citations omitted). While the Court did not explain what, precisely, the government must show in order to overcome this heavy presumption, it did indicate that the necessity of complying with another clause of the Constitution--the Establishment Clause--would excuse a viewpoint-based restriction on speech. Id. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 2520. We understand Rosenberger to mean that courts must examine viewpoint-based restrictions with an especially critical review of the government's asserted justifications for those restrictions. At a minimum, to survive strict scrutiny the City's policy must be narrowly drawn to effectuate a compelling state interest. Perry, 460 U.S. at 46, 103 S.Ct. at 955.