Court Opinion

ID: 9481033
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:06:04.01533+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:03.750029
License: Public Domain

WALD, Chief Judge,
dissenting:
I would affirm the district court’s order requiring that the petitioners be allowed to follow the traditional march route. 1 am satisfied that the trial judge found that the route from the Monument along Constitution Avenue to the Capitol was a “traditional segment of the Nation’s premier public forum.” Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Invisible Empire v. The District of Columbia, 751 F.Supp. 212, 214-15. The affidavits of the petitioners’ and United States’ police experts support that finding, and no evidence disputes the presumptive right of demonstrators for decades to utilize that route.
That right is denied here on the ground that the threat of violence by those opposed to the petitioners’ view makes it impossible for the combined forces of the Metropolitan Police Department (“MPD”) and the Park Police to safeguard the demonstrators and onlookers. The trial judge found, however, that case had not been made out, and the United States supports that position as well. The evidence in the record establishes that the MPD has been able to handle major demonstrations in the past with a large potential for violence without curtailing the traditional route. See Declaration of Robert Klotz at 5 (stating that as a retired MPD official, he finds the MPD’s claim “bewildering” because the MPD has enough personnel to handle this demonstration as it has handled other “potentially large and violent” demonstrations such as the 1980 demonstrations involving Iranian students).
First Amendment law does not permit curtailment of the right to march on a traditional parade route based on claims that even after the MPD has made a heavy commitment of its 5,000-person force, there would remain the possibility of violence against the few hundred marchers expected. See, e.g., Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 4, 69 S.Ct. 894, 896, 93 L.Ed. 1131 (1949) (“Speech is often provocative and challenging.... That is why freedom of speech, though not absolute, is nevertheless protected against censorship or punishment, unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest.”) (internal citations omitted); Beckerman v. Tupelo, 664 F.2d 502, 510 (5th Cir.1981) (“The existence of a hostile audience, *153standing alone, has never been sufficient to sustain a denial of ... First Amendment rights.... [t]he fact that some speech may stir listeners to disagree — perhaps even to disagree violently — does not by that fact alone permit regulation.”) (internal quotations omitted). To permit a two-thirds curtailment of a traditional parade route on that showing alone invites similar action against future controversial paraders of all views.
However reprehensible or provocative the view of particular groups may seem to many or most of us, their right to parade peaceably remains the most important bulwark of a democratic government against tyranny. If eleven blocks can be cut to four because of anticipated public reaction to one group, four blocks can be cut to one because of an even greater antipathy to the next group (and the acknowledgedly heavy pressures on local police), and then the parade is suddenly over before it begins. I agree with the district court (and the United States) that there is not sufficient justification for the severe curtailment of the traditional route imposed here, and I see no reason to overrule the district court’s judgment on the record before us.