Court Opinion

ID: 9461141
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:07:01.085339+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:54.843952
License: Public Domain

STEVENS, Circuit Judge
(concurring) .
With one reservation I concur in Judge Fairchild’s opinion. I question whether these plaintiffs have standing to invoke the First Amendment as a bar to a disciplinary proceeding based on the kind of conduct disclosed by this record. That conduct was not even arguably communicative 1
Our, interest in encouraging a free interchange of ideas and information provides the raison détre for oberbreadth adjudication. When rules dealing exclusively with communication have been attacked, the Supreme Court has not required the challenge to be made by a litigant who claims that his own activity was constitutionally protected.2 In such cases the Court has concluded that the cost to society of permitting some unprotected speech to go unpunished was outweighed by the danger that protected speech might be deterred by an overly broad prohibition.3
The rationale of those cases may justify an overbreadth attack on some rules that prohibit both speech and nonexpres-sive conduct.4 But if such an attack on a rule applicable both to speech and to nonexpressive conduct should be successful, the rationale for the exception would not necessarily justify a total invalidation of the mixed rule.5 The interests protected by the First Amendment would be adequately vindicated by a holding that the rule is invalid insofar as it purports to prohibit or to regulate speech or expressive conduct.6 The cost to society of permitting unprotected speech to go unpunished is acceptable and should be borne to avoid inhibiting protected speech; but our interest in freedom of speech does not justify in*1198curring the cost of permitting harmful conduct to go unpunished if that conduct is not even arguably communicative and is plainly unprotected by the Constitution.
Since the overbreadth exception should not be enlarged beyond the reason for its existence, a successful over-breadth attack would be of no benefit to a litigant whose own conduct is entirely noncommunicative. In the case before us, even if we should conclude that a rule against “unbecoming conduct” contains an excessive threat to punish protected speech, in my judgment the appropriate relief would merely foreclose enforcement of that rule against speech or expressive conduct. Such relief would be of no benefit to plaintiffs whose own conduct was not even arguably communicative. I would therefore conclude that they do not have standing to challenge Rule VII, § 4(1) (k) on First Amendment grounds. However, since a majority of the panel has reached a contrary conclusion on this issue, I join in Judge Fairchild’s opinion on the merits.

. Indeed, it deliberately frustrated communication between persons in need of help and those employed by the State to serve them.

. As a predicate for its overbreadth analysis in Gooding v. Wilson, the Court stated: “Section 26-6303 punishes only spoken words.” 405 U.S. 518, 520, 92 S.Ct. 1103, 1105, 31 L.Ed.2d 408. Similarly, in his dissenting opinion in Karlan v. City of Cincinnati, 416 U.S. 924, 94 S.Ct. 1922, 40 L.Ed.2d 280 (1974), Mr. Justice Douglas prefaced his discussion of overbreadth by stating: “These eases all involve convictions under ordinances and statutes which punish the mere utterance of words . . . .”

. “In such cases, it has been the judgment of this Court that the possible harm to society in permitting some unprotected speech to go unpunished is outweighed by the possibility that protected speech of others may be muted and perceived grievances left to fester because of the possible inhibitory effects of overly broad statutes.” Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 612, 93 S.Ct. 2908, 2916, 37 L.Ed.2d 830.

. “But the plain import of our cases is, at the very least, that facial overbreadth adjudication is an exception to our traditional rules of practice and that its function, a limited one at the outset, attenuates as the otherwise unprotected behavior that it forbids the State to sanction moves from ‘pure speech’ towards conduct and that conduct— even if expressive — falls within the scope of otherwise valid criminal laws that reflect legitimate state interests in maintaining coin-preliensive controls over harmful, constitutionally unprotected conduct.” Broadrick, supra, 413 U.S. at 615, 93 S.Ct. at 2917.

. It might be necessary to evaluate the importance of the “danger zone” in which protected expression might be inhibited. See Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479, 494, 85 S.Ct. 1116, 14 L.Ed.2d 22. Since there is a sharper demarcation between expressive conduct and nonexpressive conduct than between protected speech and unprotected speech, prohibiting enforcement against any speech or expressive conduct would not, it seems to me, leave room for any significant danger zone in which protected speech would be deterred.

. The holding in Coates v. Cincinnati, 402 U.S. 611, 91 S.Ct. 1686, 29 L.Ed.2d 214, to the extent that it rests on the First rather than the Fourteenth Amendment, is not inconsistent with this analysis. For the Cincinnati ordinance which was held invalid on its face dealt exclusively with the right of assembly which, like the right to speak freely, is expressly protected by the First Amendment. The record in that case disclosed “that the appellant Coates was a student involved in a demonstration and the other appellants were pickets involved in a labor dispute.” Id. at 612, 91 S.Ct. at 1687. They were all, therefore, engaged in a kind of expressive activity which, for the purpose of determining standing, might appropriately be treated as at least arguably protected by the First Amendment.