Court Opinion

ID: 9486146
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:39:02.354993+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:32.804647
License: Public Domain

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
with whom CUDAHY and ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judges, join concurring.
The significant number of opinions already filed in this case would, under most circumstances, be a substantial disincentive to another contribution by a single member of the court. The eyes of the bench and bar, and certainly those of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States who will undoubtedly be asked to review our work, are a fragile national resource. Under the unique circumstances presented here, however, an addition to the dialogue is justified because this ease presents a most difficult problem for the court, a problem that, in the final analysis, can only be resolved by additional guidance from the Supreme Court of the United States. Under such circumstances, we have an obligation to examine thoroughly the matter while it is before us.
We must frankly admit the source of our difficulty. The opinions of the Supreme Court in FW/PBS v. City of Dallas, 493 U.S. 215, 110 S.Ct. 596, 107 L.Ed.2d 603 (1990), and Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Publishing Co., 486 U.S. 750, 108 S.Ct. 2138, 100 L.Ed.2d 771 (1988), applied literally, appear to provide an analytical framework for the problem before us. My dissenting colleagues have filed a thorough exposition of this approach and, if the Supreme Court intends that FW/PBS and Lakewood be read and applied in such a formal fashion, this opinion has much to recommend it. By contrast, the principal opinion apparently finds the approach of these cases to produce an unrealistic result and seeks to avoid their application by recharacterizing the situation presented by this case as devoid of any expressive activity. In order to accomplish this feat, the principal opinion must declare that the place*1334ment of a newsstand, as opposed to a news-rack, does not implicate expressive activity. I respectfully submit that this approach is untenable. In Lakewood, the Supreme Court expressly noted that the regulatory scheme at issue in that case involved “expression or conduct commonly associated with expression: the circulation of newspapers.” 486 U.S. at 760, 108 S.Ct. at 2145. This case also involves the circulation of newspapers. The fact that one case involved a small, mechanical stand and the other a larger, manned stand cannot alter the reality that both involve expression. Indeed, the awkwardness of the plurality’s attempt at a quick fix to this difficult problem is readily apparent in the opinion’s subsequent reliance, despite its declaration that the First Amendment is not implicated, on a traditional First Amendment analysis — time, place, and manner regulation — to resolve ultimately the merits of the case.
In my view, we must frankly face up to the difficulty before us. This case does involve a First Amendment interest. Like Judge Flaum, I believe that, if FW/PBS and Lakewood do not govern our decision, we must be able to discern a principled doctrinal distinction between them and the case before us. A useful key to unlocking this analytical conundrum is, I believe, the established analysis applicable to time, place, or manner restrictions. For a very long time the Supreme Court has had to deal with even-handed attempts to regulate the exercise of expression in public forums. Parade or demonstration permits are the usual context in which these cases have arisen. The Court has evaluated such attempts by governments to bring order to the public forum under what is commonly known as time, place, or manner analysis. See Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288, 104 S.Ct. 3065, 82 L.Ed.2d 221 (1984). The Court has “often noted that restrictions of this kind are valid provided that they are justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech, that they are narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest, and that they leave open ample alternate channels for communication of the information.” Id. at 293,104 S.Ct. at 3069; see also Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U.S. 569, 576, 61 S.Ct. 762, 766, 85 L.Ed. 1049 (1941) (“If a municipality has authority to control the use of its public streets for parades or processions, as it undoubtedly has, it cannot be denied authority to give consideration, without unfair discrimination, to time, place, and manner in relation to the other purposes of the streets.”).1
If we are to apply this approach to the situation before us, we must deal frankly with FW/PBS and Lakewood which, our dissenting colleagues remind us, appear to have an easy application to this case. These two cases appear to apply prior restraint analysis to fact situations that are the functional equivalent of those situations that the Court had analyzed traditionally under the time, place, and manner analysis. Specifically, in Lakewood, the Court struck down as facially invalid an ordinance requiring a license to place newspaper dispensing machines on the city streets. Similarly, in FW/PBS, the Court struck down parts of an ordinance requiring the licensing of adult businesses. In both cases, the Court characterized the restriction imposed by the ordinance as a prior restraint and determined that its failure to comply with the stringent mandate of Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U.S. 51, 85 S.Ct. *1335734, 13 L.Ed.2d 649 (1965), rendered the ordinance unconstitutional.
We must determine why, in Lakewood and FW/PBS, the Court did not follow its usual approach of treating factual situations such as these as susceptible to time, place, and manner analysis and instead employed prior restraint analysis. What distinguishes the Court’s treatment of licensing schemes in these two sets of cases is the presence of unfettered discretion. In both Cox and Clark, the Court dealt with the administration of an ordinance or regulation which proscribed the activity of the licensing authority. In fact, the Cox Court distinguished those cases in which government officials were unrestrained in their power to grant or deny permits. 312 U.S. at 577, 61 S.Ct. at 766. In both Lakewood and FW/PBS, however, there was unfettered discretion to grant or deny the license — in Lakewood pursuant to the very language of the ordinance and in FW/ PBS pursuant to the way the licensing official could delay the licensing decision, presumably indefinitely. This type of discretion, in the Court’s eyes, “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.” Lakewood, 486 U.S. at 759, 108 S.Ct. at 2145. It also presents the possibility of selfeensorship. Id. Because of these concerns, the Court in Lakewood struck down the ordinance absent “neutral criteria to insure that the licensing decision is not based on the content,” id. at 760, 108 S.Ct. at 2146, and, in FW/PBS, struck down the ordinance absent the procedural guarantees of Freedman, 493 U.S. at 228,110 S.Ct. at 606.
The concerns the Court voiced in both Lakewood and FW/PBS are not present here. The Chicago ordinance sets forth criteria according to which a permit must be evaluated. Furthermore, there is a time limit within which city officials must respond to the application. In no way does the ordinance place unfettered discretion in the hands of city officials. As a result, there is no risk of either hidden or self censorship.2 It is the absence of this discretion, and the risks inherent in it, which allows us to evaluate the ordinance according to the guidelines of Cox, Clark, and, as the plurality mentions, City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U.S. 41, 106 S.Ct. 925, 89 L.Ed.2d 29 (1986).
I therefore respectfully submit that time, place, and manner analysis is an appropriate analytical tool for the assessment of this statute and, like my colleagues who have joined the principal opinion, I believe that the ordinance in question can be sustained on this basis. I hasten to add, however, that there is a great need for clarification of standards in this area, and I respectfully suggest that this case is deserving of further review in the Supreme Court of the United States. City officials ought to be able to address matters as basic as the regulation of newsstands on the city streets in a more expeditious manner than afforded by litigation of this sort.

. The Court also has used time, place, and manner analysis to evaluate restrictions on expression outside the parade and demonstration context. See, e.g., Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 791, 109 S.Ct. 2746, 2753, 105 L.Ed.2d 661 (1989) (upholding noise ordinance under Clark time, place, and manner formulation); City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U.S. 41, 106 S.Ct. 925, 89 L.Ed.2d 29 (1986) (stating that zoning ordinance limiting placement of adult theatres was consent neutral and valid as a time, place, manner regulation); Heffron v. International Soc’y for Krishna Consciousness, 452 U.S. 640, 647, 101 S.Ct. 2559, 69 L.Ed.2d 298 (1981) (holding state fair rule that required all distribution and sale of materials to take place from fixed location was reasonable time, place, and manner restriction); Virginia Pharmacy Bd. v. Virginia Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748, 771, 96 S.Ct. 1817, 1830, 48 L.Ed.2d 346 (1976) (acknowledging time, place, manner analysis for restrictions "that are justified without reference to the content of speech, that ... serve a significant governmental interest, and that ... leave open ample alternative channels for communication of the information,” but holding test inapplicable to ban on advertisement of prescription drug prices which made reference to content).

. Lakewood hints at this distinction. In excepting building permits from the scope of its holding, it noted that its holding did not apply to "laws of general application that are not aimed at conduct commonly associated with expression." Lakewood, 486 U.S. at 760-61, 108 S.Ct. at 2145-46. It noted that, although such laws of general application are subject to abuse, the abuse easily can be detected because "the general application of the statute to areas unrelated to expression will provide the courts a yardstick with which to measure the licensor's occasional speech-related decision.” Id. at 761, 108 S.Ct. at 2146. Here, we do not deal with laws of general applicability. As demonstrated in the text, however, we do deal with a statute whose structure and operation render content-based abuse at the hand of governmental officials detectable in a relatively easy manner.