Court Opinion

ID: 9703529
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:59:43.252151+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:49.986268
License: Public Domain

RIVES, Circuit Judge (dissenting).
This purports to be a class action brought on behalf of persons who are attempting by peaceful picketing and demonstrations to enforce the constitutional rights of Negro citizens of Mississippi to register and vote in that State. It seeks to enjoin the enforcement of House Bill 546, 1964 Session Mississippi Legislature, which, after being passed unanimously by both the House and the Senate of the Mississippi Legislature, was approved by the Governor on April 8, 1964. The statute reads as follows:
“AN ACT TO PROHIBIT THE UNLAWFUL PICKETING OF STATE BUILDINGS, COURTHOUSES, PUBLIC STREETS, AND SIDEWALKS.
“BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI:
“SECTION 1. It shall be unlawful for any person, singly or in concert with others, to engage in picketing or mass demonstrations in such a manner as to obstruct or interfere with free ingress or egress to and from any public premises, State property, county or municipal courthouses, city halls, office buildings, jails, or other public buildings or property owned by the State of Mississippi or any county or municipal government located therein or with the transaction of public business or administration of justice therein or thereon conducted or so as to obstruct or interfere with free use of public streets, sidewalks or other public ways adjacent or contiguous thereto.
“Section 2. Any person guilty of violating this act shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00), or imprisoned in jail not more than six (6) months, or both such fine and imprisonment.
“SECTION 3. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after its passage.”
The statute was implemented on the day after its enactment. One of the named plaintiffs, Reverend J ohn Earl Cameron, was threatened with arrest and on the succeeding day, April 10, he was arrested for violation of the statute. Forty-odd other persons were arrested on the same occasion while picketing the Forrest County Court House in support of the Negro voter registration campaign. Numerous other persons, including the other named plaintiff, Mrs. Victoria Jackson Gray, were threatened with arrest but not actually arrested.
This action was instituted on April 13. A hearing on the application for interlocutory injunction was held on April 29, but decision on that application appeared not necessary in view of the commendable action of the Attorney General of Mississippi in securing the postponement of the trial of any prosecutions for violating the statutes until at least July 15, 1964. The cause is now submitted for final decree upon the amended complaint and answer thereto and upon affidavits.
As might be expected, the plaintiffs’ affidavits are to the effect that the picketing was peaceful and orderly and did not block any of the entrances or exits of the courthouse, while the defendants’ affidavits are diametrically to the contrary and to the effect that the picketing actually obstructed and unreasonably interfered with ingress and egress to and from the courthouse. Photographs of demonstrations are attached to some of the defendants’ affidavits. Without the benefit of oral testimony and cross-examination of the witnesses it is impossible to resolve the conflict of testimony.
Similar conflict is to be anticipated in most, if not all, prosecutions under this *857statute, for what constitutes “obstruction” 1 or “interference” is essentially a matter of opinion.2
'In Mississippi, either an officer or a private person may arrest any person without warrant for an indictable offense committed in his presence.3 The initial decision of whether picketing or demonstrations constitute “obstruction” or “interference” will normally be made by the arresting officer or even by a private person serving as a vigilante.- This statute thus furnishes the means by which picketing and demonstrations may be practically forbidden — certainly until the prosecutions reach the trial stage.
Picketing is not beyond legislative control, but a statute against picketing must be exact and precise, for example, by limiting the pickets to a certain designated reasonable number or by prescribing that they must walk at a certain named reasonable distance from each other. Broad, sweeping and inexact terms of a statute regulating picketing necessarily encroach on freedom of speech and press.4
As said in Shelton v. Tucker, 1960, 364 U.S. 479, 488, 81 S.Ct. 247, 252, 5 L.Ed. 2d 231:
“In a series of decisions this Court has held that, even though the governmental purpose be legitimate and substantial, that purpose cannot be pursued by means that broadly stifle fundamental personal liberties when the end can be more narrowly achieved. The breadth of legislative abridgment must be viewed in the light of less drastic means for , achieving the same basic purpose.”
In a case decided as late as June 22, 1964, the Supreme Court said:
“It is a familiar and basic principle, recently reaffirmed in NAACP v. Alabama [ex rel. Flowers], 377 U.S. 288, 307 [84 S.Ct. 1302, 12 L.Ed.2d 325], that ‘a governmental purpose to control or prevent activities constitutionally subject to state regulation may not be achieved by means which sweep unnecessarily broadly and thereby invade the area of protected freedoms.’ See, e. g., NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 438 [83 S.Ct. 328, 9 L.Ed.2d 405]; Louisiana ex rel. Gremillion v. NAACP, 366 U.S. 293 [81 S.Ct. 1333, 6 L.Ed.2d 301]; Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479, 488 [81 S.Ct. 247, 5 L.Ed.2d 231]; Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners, 353 U.S. 232, 239 [77 S.Ct. 752, 1 L.Ed.2d 796]; Martin v. [City of] Struthers, 319 U.S. 141,146-149 [63 S.Ct. 862, 87 L.Ed. 1313] ; Cantwell v. [State of] Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 304-307 [60 S.Ct. 900, 84 L.Ed. 1213] ; Schneider v. State, 308 U.S. 147, 161, 165 [60 S.Ct. 146, 84 L.Ed. 155].”
*858Aptheker et al. v. Secretary of State, 1964, 378 U.S. 500, 508, 84 S.Ct. 1659, 1664, 12 L.Ed.2d 992.
The same opinion quoted with approval from NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 432, 433, 83 S.Ct. 328, 337, 9 L.Ed.2d 405, as follows:
“[I]n appraising a statute’s inhibitory effect upon such rights, this Court has not hesitated to take into account possible applications of the statute, in other factual contexts besides that at bar. Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 97-98 [60 S.Ct. 736, 84 L.Ed. 1093]; Winters v. [People of State of] New York [333 U.S. 507] 518-520 [68 S.Ct. 665, 92 L.Ed. 840]. Cf. Staub v. City of Baxley, 355 U.S. 313 [78 S.Ct. 277, 2 L.Ed.2d 302]. * * * The objectionable quality of vagueness and overbreadth does not depend upon absence of fair notice to a criminally accused or upon unchanneled delegation of legislative powers, but upon the danger of tolerating, in the area of First Amendment freedoms, the existence of a penal statute susceptible of sweeping and improper application. Cf. Marcus v. Search Warrant, 367 U.S. 717, 733 [81 S.Ct. 1708, 6 L.Ed.2d 1127]. These freedoms are delicate and vulnerable, as well as supremely precious in our society. The threat of sanctions may deter their exercise almost as potently as the actual application of sanctions.”
It is difficult to conceive of a statute drawn in broader or more vague and sweeping terms than that here under attack. In my opinion, the statute is so clearly unconstitutional that this case is hardly one “required * * * to be heard and determined by a district court of three judges.” 28 U.S.C.A. § 1253. See Bailey v. Patterson, 1962, 369 U.S. 31, 82 S.Ct. 549, 7 L.Ed.2d 512, vacating and remanding Bailey v. Patterson, S.D. Miss.1961, 199 F.Supp. 595.
On the subject of abstention, I need not repeat in this dissent the argument contained in my dissenting opinion in Bailey v. Patterson, supra, 199 F.Supp. at 615-618.
The jurisdiction of this Court is invoked under 42 U.S.C.A. § 1983, among other statutes. As was said in McNeese v. Board of Education, 1963, 373 U.S. 668, 671, 672, 83 S.Ct. 1433, 1435, 10 L.Ed.2d 622:
“That is the statute that was involved in Monroe v. Pape, supra [365 U.S. 167, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492] ; and we reviewed its history at length in that case. 365 U.S., at 171 et seq. [81 S.Ct., at 475 et seq.]. The purposes were severalfold — to override certain kinds of state laws, to provide a remedy where state law was inadequate, ‘to provide a federal remedy where the state remedy, though adequate in theory, was not available in practice’ (id., 174 [81 S.Ct. 477]), and to provide a remedy in the federal courts supplementary to any remedy any State might have. Id., 180-183 [81 S.Ct. 480-482].
“We would defeat those purposes if we held that assertion of a federal claim in a federal court must await an attempt to vindicate the same claim in a state court. The First Congress created federal courts as the chief — though not always the exclusive — tribunals for enforcement of federal rights. * * * ”
In my opinion, the statute under attack is clearly unconstitutional, and the plaintiffs are just as clearly entitled to have its enforcement enjoined. I therefore respectfully dissent.

. “Obstruction” of the fixed rails of a railroad track is a far more definite concept. See State v. Lucas, 1954, 221 Miss. 538, 73 So.2d 158; Turner v. Southern Railway Co., 1916, 112 Miss. 359, 73 So. 62

. See definitions of “obstruct” and “obstruction” in 29 Words and Phrases, Perm, ed., p. 80 et seq. and pocket supplement, and of “interfere” and “interference” in 22 Words and Phrases, p. 253 et seq., and pocket supplement.

. Mississippi Code 1942, sec. 2470.

. Thornhill v. State of Alabama, 1940, 310 U.S. 88, 100, 101, 60 S.Ct. 736, 84 L.Ed. 1093; Carlson v. People of State of California, 1940, 310 U.S. 106, 112, 60 S.Ct. 746, 84 L.Ed. 1104; Edwards v. South Carolina, 1963, 372 U.S. 229, 83 S.Ct. 680, 9 L.Ed.2d 697; Henry v. City of Rock Hill, 1964, 376 U.S. 776, 84 S.Ct. 1042, 12 L.Ed.2d 79.
“Broad prophylactic rules in the area of free expression are suspect. See e. g., Near v. Minnesota [ex rel. Olson], 283 U.S. 697 [51 S.Ct. 625, 75 L.Ed. 1357] ; Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479 [81 S.Ct. 247, 5 L.Ed.2d 231] ; Louisiana ex rel. Gremillion v. NAACP, 366 U.S. 293 [81 S.Ct. 1333, 6 L.Ed.2d 301], Cf. Schneider v. [State of New Jersey, Town of] Irvington, 308 U.S. 147, 162, [60 S.Ct. 146, 84 L.Ed. 155]. Precision of regulation must be the touchstone in an area so closely touching our most precious freedoms.” N.A.A.C.P. v. Button, 1963, 371 U.S. 415, 438, 83 S.Ct. 328, 340, 9 L.Ed.2d 405.