Opinion ID: 770594
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Excessive Breadth of the Defendants' Investigation

Text: 84 As we have previously stated, there is a further reason why the investigation into the plaintiffs' First Amendment activity was violative of the plaintiffs' rights. Regardless of whether Noerr-Pennington or Bill Johnson's applies, the investigation far exceeded what was reasonable for the purpose of ascertaining the plaintiffs' motives for filing the statecourt suit and thus intruded unnecessarily on their First Amendment rights. 85 It is axiomatic that when the actions of government officials so directly affect citizens' First Amendment rights, the officials have a duty to take the least intrusive measures necessary to perform their assigned functions. See Lamont v. Postmaster Gen. of United States, 381 U.S. 301, 310 (1965) (Brennan, J., concurring) (citing Butler v. Michigan, 352 U.S. 380 (1957)); cf. Scott v. Rosenberg, 702 F.2d 1263, 1275 (9th Cir. 1983) (observing that although [c]ertainly, governmental agencies must be wary of complaints which cannot be investigated without interfering with first amendment rights, investigation in this case was narrow and avoided any unnecessary interference with the free exercise of religion). The plaintiffs' reasons for opposing the Bel Air project were matters of public record and evident from the flyers in the San Francisco Office's possession before HRI even filed its complaint. There was simply no justification for the officials to take the extraordinarily intrusive and chilling measures they did during the subsequent eight-month investigation. There was no cause, for example, for defendant Zurowski to advise the plaintiffs during the conciliation process to cease publication of discriminatory statements (including articles in the CNA Newsletter) and fliers about the potential residents of the Bel Air project; even if the plaintiffs' suit had been objectively baseless, their non-threatening statements, discriminatory or not, would still have been fully protected by the First Amendment. There was no cause for defendants Smith and Lee to demand that the plaintiffs produce a list of the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of all involved parties and all witnesses to the expressive activity complained of, as well as copies of all files in their control concerning the Bel Air project. There was no cause for defendant Gillespie to assume the authority to investigate speech because it advocated discrimination against persons afforded benefits by the Fair Housing Act. There was also no cause for defendant Phillips to tell the San Francisco Examiner (if he did) that the plaintiffs had broken the law. 86 The HUD officials' conduct cannot be squared with the First Amendment, no matter what rule is applied in evaluating the filing of the state-court lawsuit. The breadth of the investigation and the measures the officials took during its course bore no relation to the narrow purpose on which they now rely. The scope and manner of the investigation violated the plaintiffs' First Amendment rights. 87