Court Opinion

ID: 9461282
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:10:26.95387+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:58.836522
License: Public Domain

SETH, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
This action began as a challenge to Ordinance 343 of the City of Artesia which was a ban on residential picketing except in a labor dispute. The trial court enjoined the enforcement of Ordinance 343 by reason of' the exception referred to, and in reliance on Police Department of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U.S. 92, 92 S.Ct. 2286, 33 L.Ed.2d 212. However, before the injunction went into effect, the City enacted Ordinance 347, which contained no exceptions. The plaintiffs amended their complaint to attack the new ordinance. The “picketing” which took place occurred under the prior ordinance (343), and there has been no picketing under No. 347.
Under these circumstances, the appeal is not concerned with any construction or application of particular wording of the ordinance or of definitions. The plaintiffs thus assert that on its face, in its absolute prohibition of residential picketing and in whatever degree of orderliness, it encroaches on First Amendment rights to an unreasonable extent.
Ordinance 347 is as broad a prohibition of residential picketing as could be devised, but the breadth is not to be measured against picketing or residential picketing, but against protected First Amendment rights. In this perspective it does prohibit certain speech-related conduct at a particular place. The nature and extent of the prohibited acts are set against the interests, rights, or privileges sought to be protected by the ordinance. Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 559, 85 S.Ct. 476, 13 L.Ed.2d 487. It would serve no purpose to again describe the importance of the speech aspects of the balancing. In the situation before us, the pleadings frame the issues between the plaintiffs on one side and certain part-time elected public officials on the other. The basic problem relates to the hiring of city employees and it is a public-political problem. In this context it is apparent that several avenues are open for the exercise of the speech-public information rights both geographically and by reason of defendants’ representative capacities as public servants. The homeside, fireside, privacy aspects have been described in Gregory v. Chicago, 394 U.S. 111, 89 S.Ct. 946, 22 L.Ed.2d 134, and Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510.
It is apparent that whatever restrictions on First Amendment rights which may come about under this ordinance— the requirement that whatever unique communication advantages that may be derived from residential picketing must be foregone — do not outweigh the need for protection of privacy in the home and home neighborhood. This protection is available for public officials as a place where there is only an identity as a private individual, and where their families and neighbors may do the same. See Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551, 92 S.Ct. 2219, 33 L.Ed.2d 131, and Cox v. *546Louisiana, 379 U.S. 559, 85 S.Ct. 476, 13 L.Ed.2d 487.
I agree with the analysis of the balancing made by Judge Barrett and by the trial judge in this respect. I would thus affirm the judgment of the trial court.