Court Opinion

ID: 9481032
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:06:04.012685+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:03.748788
License: Public Domain

RANDOLPH, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
The district court’s order should be vacated as an abuse of discretion and the case remanded.
The Ku Klux Klan needs more than a permit to march down Constitution Avenue. It needs police protection and plenty of it. When the Klan tried to march along this route on September 2, 1990, it got nowhere. The police had trouble controlling the mob and the Klan headed for the Capitol in a heavily-guarded convoy.
The Klan wanted to try again and asked the District of Columbia to issue another marching permit. The city did so, but made two adjustments. It shortened the route from eleven blocks to four and greatly increased the number of officers assigned to the event. Both measures were undertaken for the purpose of facilitating the march by protecting the participants and onlookers from violence the authorities reasonably anticipated. As'matters stood before the district court issued its order, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) had allocated more than one half of its entire force to this march, a total of 2,500 law enforcement officers, 1,500 of whom would stand shoulder-to-shoulder on both sides of Constitution Avenue from 7th Street to 3rd Street. This massive commitment has stretched the MPD to its limit.
The Klan nevertheless desires to start its march seven blocks away, at 14th Street rather than 7th Street. But according to the Deputy Chief of the MPD, that would require at least 1,000 more officers to secure the expanded route and the MPD cannot spare them.
The district court has permitted the Klan to march from 14th Street regardless of whether the additional officers can be rounded up. The idea must be that as far as safety is concerned, the police will just have to do the best they can and if the Klan’s members are foolhardy enough to march without adequate police protection, that is their business. But it is not simply the Klan’s business. Maintaining public order and preventing violence are the concerns of government. The march will take place in an area containing museums and other attractions to visitors. Their safety and the safety of everyone who might be in the vicinity of this event is at stake. If protection of the public and the participants can reasonably be assured only by shortening the distance of the march, the First Amendment does not forbid that measure.
The district court’s basic mistake was in relying on decisions holding that the hostile reaction of an audience cannot justify a total ban on speech. Those decisions have nothing to do with this case. There will be no prohibition of speech. The Klan can make its point whether its members march one mile or two. But the Klan’s members will not be able to take a single step without police protection. How many steps they should be permitted to take must depend on how many officers can reasonably be mustered. That is the reality, and the Supreme Court has long recognized that the place and manner of presenting speech can be regulated in light of the probability that it will provoke a violent response. Police Dep’t of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U.S. 92, 99, 92 S.Ct. 2286, 2292, 33 L.Ed.2d 212 (1972); Grayned, v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 116, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 2303, 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972); and Boos v. Barry, 485 U.S. 312, 331-32, 108 S.Ct. 1157, 1169-70, 99 L.Ed.2d 333 (1988), are but three examples among many.
The permit allowing a march from 7th Street to 3rd Street thus constituted a regulation of the place where speech will occur and should have been tested by the standards the Supreme Court has developed for such situations. Regulations of this sort must be justified without regard to the content of the speech, must be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest and must leave open an ample alternative channel of communication. Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 109 S.Ct. 2746, 2753, 105 L.Ed.2d 661 (1989); Clark v. Community for Creative *152Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288, 293, 104 S.Ct. 3065, 3068-69, 82 L.Ed.2d 221 (1984).
The permit granted to the Klan satisfies these standards. It merely shortens the distance of the Klan’s march, thus leaving open the channel of communication the Klan has chosen. It is narrowly tailored to serve the compelling governmental interest of maintaining the peace because it reflects the authorities’ best estimate of the area they can reasonably secure with the resources available to them. The regulation is “content-neutral”: the District of Columbia did not restrict the distance of the march “because of disagreement with the message presented." Clark, 468 U.S. at 295, 104 S.Ct. at 3070; see also Boos v. Barry, 485 U.S. at 320, 108 S.Ct. at 1163. It restricted the distance because, having charged 2,500 officers with the duty of ensuring that the march would go forward along the prescribed route, it had no more officers available.
The short of the matter is that safety must be taken into account in regulating the time, place and manner of parading and marching on Constitution Avenue. On the basis of the district court’s logic, however, the Klan could demand to parade the entire length of that thoroughfare and the city could do nothing but accede. It may be that the route from 14th Street to 3rd is the customary one for marches and parades, but that does not preclude reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on its use. The case would be different if there were evidence that the authorities discriminated against the Klan on some improper basis. But there is no such evidence. The record before us shows instead government officials conscientiously trying to perform their duty to preserve the peace while accommodating those who could not exercise their freedom to march without the government’s protection. See Belknap v. Leary, 427 F.2d 496, 498 (2d Cir.1970). The First Amendment demands no more.