Court Opinion

ID: 9756736
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 21:50:19.77764+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:24.820564
License: Public Domain

McMILLEN, District Judge (concurring) .
Although I concur with the result reached in the foregoing Opinion, I do not agree that the phrase “contributed to a substantial disruption of the administration of the institution” is unconstitutionally vague or overbroad when read in the context of the balance of Section 1060. Starting with the precept that a Congressional enactment should be upheld if possible, particularly when life or liberty are not at stake, I am persuaded that the foregoing term is specific enough to give a student fair warning of the kind of conduct which could jeopardize her federal assistance. Furthermore, the offender is given the added protection of a hearing by an official who is presumably qualified to apply this particular phrase, even though he might not be able to identify a “crime of a serious nature.”
Few, if any, legislative enactments are flawless, and the courts’ objective is to enforce them, not to edit them. This is particularly true in the ease of a statute by which the Congress has expressed an important public policy. The Senate Committee Report which accompanied the bill stated:
The committee has been dismayed and alarmed by evidence of student unrest on the college campuses of this country which has been outwardly evidenced by rioting, trespass and forceful interference with the administration of the colleges and with the activities of students who wish to pursue their studies. Such activity is not to be countenanced in a society such as ours. Peaceful picketing and free speech are treasured rights which must be protected but unlawful and violent conduct cannot be condoned. [1968 U.S.Code, Cong. & Admin. News, pp. 4035, 4053]
Although there is no satisfactory objective measure by which to test a statutory phrase, the Supreme Court in Cameron et al. v. Johnson et al., 390 U.S. 611, 88 S.Ct. 1335, 20 L.Ed.2d 182 (1968) sustained a Mississippi statute which prohibited picketing “. . .in such a manner as to obstruct or unreasonably interfere with free ingress or egress to and from any . . . county . . courthouses . . . .” At 390 U.S. p. 616, at 88 S.Ct. p. 1338, the Court stated:
The terms “obstruct” and “unreasonably interfere” plainly require no “guess [ing] at [their] meaning.” Appellants focus on the word “unreasonably.” It is a widely used and well understood word and clearly so when juxtaposed with “obstruct” and “interfere.” We conclude that the statute clearly and precisely delineates its reach in words of common understanding. It is “a precise and narrowly drawn regulatory statute evincing a legislative judgment that certain specific conduct be proscribed.”
The phrase “substantial disruption of the institution” leaves only a little more to the imagination than does the phrase in the Mississippi anti-picketing statute and, in my judgment, adequately advises a student and the hearing officer of the conduct which Congress intended to proscribe. If the foregoing quoted words pass muster, the balance of the phrase in Section 1060 should not require us to invalidate the statute. With all due respect, I believe that the majority’s concern with the particular words in issue is based on an undue involvement with semantics such as the Supreme Court warned against in Cole v. Richardson, 397 U.S. 238 at 240, 90 S.Ct. 1099, 25 L.Ed.2d 275 (1968).