Opinion ID: 657360
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Newsstand Structure

Text: 13 Chicago has passed numerous ordinances attempting to deal with the myriad of problems that arise on its public way, from carnivals to snow removal. Chicago Mun.Code Secs. 10-28-010 to -800. Chicago asserts that this ordinance prohibits all vendors from building structures on the public way; newspaper vendors can erect a structure only after obtaining a permit. As a general starting point, unless another ordinance specifically authorizes otherwise, no person shall erect or place any building, structure, or other stationary object, in whole or in part, upon any public way or other public ground within the city. Id. at -040. There are exceptions. It shall be unlawful for any person to erect, place or maintain in, upon or over any public way or other public place in the city, any [stand] ... for the display or sale of goods, wares or merchandise ... unless a permit for the same shall be obtained from the superintendent of compensation....  Id. at -050. Specifically for newspaper vendors, 14 It shall be unlawful for any person to erect, locate, construct or maintain any newspaper stand on the public way or any other unenclosed property owned or controlled by the city without obtaining a permit therefor from the commissioner of transportation as hereinafter provided. 15 Id. -130. In this case the parties have focused their arguments in the district court and on appeal on the constitutionality of Chicago's newsstand permit ordinance, id. at -130 to -196. Graff sought an injunction to prevent Chicago from removing his newsstand under the supposition that if the permit ordinance were declared unconstitutional, his newsstand should stay. But even without the challenged newsstand ordinance, Graff still has no right to occupy the public sidewalk; that is, unless he has a constitutional right to build or maintain a newsstand on public property. If the ordinance goes down (along with the availability of a permit) the newsstand goes down as well. As a preliminary matter, then, we must examine whether he has an independent constitutional right to erect his newsstand on the public sidewalk. 16 In Lakewood the city had absolutely prohibited the private placement of any structure on public property. 486 U.S. at 753, 108 S.Ct. at 2142. The district court found that this prohibition violated the First Amendment as applied to newsracks. The city, however, did not appeal; rather, it enacted ordinances that permitted newsracks under certain conditions. The Supreme Court concluded that the new ordinances placed too much discretion with the city officials, thus rendering the ordinances unconstitutional. The Court did not reach the question of whether a city may constitutionally prohibit the placement of newsracks on public property. Id. at 762 n. 7, 108 S.Ct. at 2147 n. 7. Today, with regard to newsstands, we reach that question. 17 At the outset we note that no person has a constitutional right to erect or maintain a structure on the public way. In Lubavitch Chabad House, Inc. v. City of Chicago, 917 F.2d 341 (7th Cir.1990), the City had decorated O'Hare Airport with Christmas trees and other ornaments; persons desiring to display religious symbols were allowed to lease an area of the airport. The Lubavitch Chabad House, however, did not want to pay. The organization sought to display a free standing Chanukah menorah in one of the public areas. We held that the ordinance did not involve any form of constitutionally protected speech. Id. at 347. There is no 18 private constitutional right to erect a structure on public property. If there were, our traditional public forums, such as our public parks, would be cluttered with all manner of structures. Public parks are certainly quintessential public forums where free speech is protected, but the Constitution neither provides, nor has it ever been construed to mandate, that any person or group be allowed to erect structures at will. 19 Id.; accord Members of City Council v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 813-15, 104 S.Ct. 2118, 2133-34, 80 L.Ed.2d 772 (1984). 20 Two years after we decided Lubavitch, the Supreme Court ruled that an airport was not considered a traditional public forum. The Lubavitch rule nevertheless stands that even in a public forum there is no constitutional right to erect a structure. 917 F.2d at 347. The structure of a Chanukah menorah deserves no less protection than the structure of a newsstand. The building of a newsstand is simply not a form of constitutionally protected expression. Thus Lubavitch is dispositive of Graff's request for an injunction. Requiring a permit for the structure is not a prior restraint on speech. While public forums certainly provide places where people have a right to express their views through handbills, literature and the spoken word, Jamison v. Texas, 318 U.S. 413, 416, 63 S.Ct. 669, 671, 87 L.Ed. 869 (1943), they do not have the right to erect a newsstand, in this case on a public sidewalk. Without an ordinance and the permit it requires, newsstands and other structures have no protection from the city's bulldozer.
21 Lubavitch involved a structure used to advance speech and religion. Graff nevertheless maintains that Supreme Court precedent entitles structures for newspaper distribution to constitutional protection. In Lakewood a newspaper challenged a city ordinance that allowed the mayor to grant or deny permits to publishers to place their newsracks on public property. The mayor had to state specific reasons if he denied the application; in granting a permit, the mayor could add such terms and conditions he deemed reasonable and necessary. The newspaper elected not to apply for a permit, instead bringing a facial challenge to the ordinance. 486 U.S. at 754, 108 S.Ct. at 2142. 22 [A] facial challenge lies whenever a licensing law gives a government official or agency substantial power to discriminate based on the content or viewpoint of speech by suppressing disfavored speech or disliked speakers.... The law must have a close enough nexus to expression, or to conduct commonly associated with expression, to pose a real and substantial threat of the identified censorship risks. 23 Id. at 759, 108 S.Ct. at 2145. The Court (in a four to three decision) found that the First Amendment was implicated because the specific ordinance involved newspapers and required them to renew their newsrack licenses annually. The Court saw the printing and circulation of newspapers as conduct commonly associated with expression and the periodic licensing scheme as closer to a regulation that allows the government to view actual speech content before issuing a permit. 24 Graff argues that newsracks and newsstands should receive identical First Amendment protection. But Lakewood does not so easily bridge the gap between newsracks and newsstands. They are significantly different methods of distribution and we must assess them on standards uniquely suited to each. See Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad, 420 U.S. 546, 557, 95 S.Ct. 1239, 1245, 43 L.Ed.2d 448 (1975) (Each medium of expression, of course, must be assessed for First Amendment purposes by standards suited to it, for each may present its own problems) (citations omitted). 25 Newsstands are large, permanent-type structures. 2 They are constructed, and once in place they are not easily moved. Newsstands do not present one viewpoint; rather they supply many and varying editorial opinions. Newsstands shelter a business operator and his operation; they do not merely dispense or hand deliver newspapers. 3 Newsstands also are more likely to obstruct the views of pedestrians and automobile drivers. In short, newsstands compared to newsracks are much larger, more permanent structures that occupy a significant portion of limited sidewalk space. 4 Thus, building and operating a newsstand is conduct, not speech, which the City can lawfully proscribe:Municipal authorities, as trustees for the public, have the duty to keep their communities' streets open and available for movement of people and property, the primary purpose to which the streets are dedicated. So long as legislation to this end does not abridge the constitutional liberty of one rightfully upon the street to impart information through speech or the distribution of literature, it may lawfully regulate the conduct of those using the streets. For example, a person could not exercise this liberty by taking his stand in the middle of a crowded street, contrary to traffic regulations, and maintain his position to the stoppage of all traffic; a group of distributors could not insist upon a constitutional right to form a cordon across the street and to allow no pedestrian to pass who did not accept a tendered leaflet; nor does the guarantee of freedom of speech or of the press deprive a municipality of power to enact regulations against throwing literature broadcast in the streets. Prohibition of such conduct would not abridge the constitutional liberty since such activity bears no necessary relationship to the freedom to speak, write, print or distribute information or opinion. 26 Schneider v. State, 308 U.S. 147, 160-61, 60 S.Ct. 146, 150-51, 84 L.Ed. 155 (1939); accord Lee, --- U.S. at ----, 112 S.Ct. at 2717 (The principal purpose of streets and sidewalks, like airports, is to facilitate transportation, not public discourse. (emphasis added) (Kennedy, J., concurring)). 27 In Lakewood the Court concluded the ordinance implicated speech because it required periodic license renewal and the licensing system was directed narrowly and specifically at expression or conduct commonly associated with expression: the circulation of newspapers. 486 U.S. at 760. This case neither concerns simply the circulation and printing of newspapers nor conduct commonly associated with expression. This case involves a structure. A newsrack, as a source of news, is inextricably tied to the publication it contains. For instance, Chicago has newsracks for the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and whatever other publications might be popular in the city. To give a city official unfettered discretion over newsracks is to raise the possibility that the official--because of dissatisfaction over a particular editorial policy--might ban or severely limit the newsracks of a particular publication. For instance, if the official is lampooned by, say, the Chicago Tribune, as he or his boss makes a re-election bid, he would have an incentive to limit their newsracks. At the very least, the Chicago Tribune might limit its editorial efforts because of fear of such censorship. 28 The same threat of prior restraint does not exist for newsstands. They are structures not at all tied to particular publications. In our hypothetical, the Chicago official--even if he wanted to--could not retaliate against the Chicago Tribune by regulating newsstands. Only under the least likely scenario would a Chicago official be able to target a certain publication by targeting a certain newsstand. For a city official to accomplish this type of censorship, he would need a large staff to check all of the newsstands in the city to find the ones disseminating the objectionable material. Then he would have to deny permits to those newsstands. To chill similar distribution by others, he would have to make public that he was closing certain newsstands because they were distributing objectionable material. This scenario is hardly similar to one Chicago official nixing all of the newsracks of a certain publication by the stroke of his pen, while safely hidden behind the walls of city hall. So unlikely is the former scenario that the First Amendment does not require the ordinance to be drafted to avoid it. Further, the closing of newsstands would affect all of the publications in the newsstand equally, and the Chicago Tribune would still have its other methods of dissemination--newsboys, newsracks, in-building newsstands, etc.--to sell papers. 29 The protections provided newsracks are tailored to their peculiar characteristics. Judge Cummings' dissent and Judge Flaum's concurrence take the position that the same protections tailored to fit newsracks should be placed upon newsstands. But newsstands are not newsracks. The same threat of targeting one publication inherent in the regulation of newsracks is not present in the regulation of newsstands. Judge Cummings' dissent offers a remote scenario where a city official might target certain off-beat publications or pornographic publications by targeting certain newsstands. Cummings, J. dissent at 1337-38. But the First Amendment does not require that we create unlikely scenarios for the censorship of speech and require city governments to draft their regulations to avoid these scenarios. Only when the ordinance at issue presents an obvious and immediate threat of censorship--as in the case of the newsrack ordinance in Lakewood--should we allow a facial challenge to head off the possibility of censorship. When the threat of censorship derives from the unlikeliest of scenarios--such as the targeting of off-beat or pornographic publications when issuing newsstand permits--a facial challenge is inappropriate. The threat is too remote and speculative. 30 Given that there is no constitutional right to build or maintain a newsstand on the public way, the district court properly refused to enjoin Chicago from removing Graff's newsstand. But Chicago is not interested in removing Graff's newsstand because it occupies public land. Rather Chicago wants to remove Graff's newsstand because he has no permit. Thus, the parties in this case did not focus their arguments on the propriety of whether the district court should have issued an injunction. They wanted a ruling on the constitutionality of the new ordinance. The district court obliged, and upheld the ordinance by granting Chicago's motions to dismiss. On appeal Graff claims the ordinance gives Chicago too much discretion, imposes unreasonable time, place and manner restrictions, does not provide sufficient judicial review, and denies equal protection by treating newsstands and sidewalk cafes differently. We will address each of these constitutional challenges.