Court Opinion

ID: 9848598
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:23:10.462054+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:28.829507
License: Public Domain

*575COLEMAN, Judge,
concurring, in part, and dissenting, in part.
I concur with Part II of the majority opinion which holds that the circuit court did not err by refusing to remand the case to the general district court. However, I disagree with the majority’s holdings that Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority’s (RRHA’s) barment proceeding and “trespass policy” do not violate the First Amendment and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the barment procedure and trespass statute, as applied in this case, restrict conduct in a “non-public forum,” which consists of private streets and sidewalks of a public housing development. In my opinion, the streets and sidewalks of Whitcomb Court are public property open to travel by the public at large and, as such, are a “traditional public forum.” Accordingly, any effort by the City of Richmond to control constitutionally protected conduct in a traditional public forum must pass a strict scrutiny test. In my opinion, because the barment procedure and trespass statute infringed on Hicks’ right to move freely and to be present in a “traditional public forum,” the barmenttrespass proceeding violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Accordingly, I dissent from those holdings.
The City of Richmond, in an effort to make certain of its streets “private” property, passed an ordinance which authorized deeding those streets to RRHA. After the streets were deeded to RRHA, “No Trespass” signs were posted throughout Whitcomb Court, stating that the property and streets are private property. However, the streets are not gated, barricaded, or otherwise closed or restricted only to Whitcomb Court traffic. The streets remain open to vehicular traffic and the sidewalks are open to access by the public. RRHA’s stated goal for “privatization” of the streets was to make the community safer by removing persons from the housing development who commit unlawful acts, particularly involving drugs and firearms; to provide a better opportunity for residents of *576the community to develop safety initiatives, such as resident patrols and neighborhood watch; and to hold residents accountable for knowingly harboring criminals.
Although the Richmond City ordinance and deed conveying the streets and sidewalks to RRHA purport to make them private property, both documents specifically provide that the streets “shall be designated as public highways for law enforcement purposes in accordance with Virginia Code Section 46.2-1307 ... and that the City shall retain a full width right of way maintenance easement in the streets.” After the City executed the “privatization” deed, RRHA’s Director of Housing signed a written “authorization” implementing the barment proceedings. The authorization provided that “each and every Richmond Police Department officer [was authorized] to serve notice, either orally or in writing,” forbidding any person from returning to the property if such person could not demonstrate that he or she was a resident or employee, or that he or she was there for a legitimate business or social purpose. According to a printed brochure issued by RRHA to the Whitcomb Court residents, “unauthorized persons,” who are subject to the barment proceedings, are all non-residents who cannot demonstrate that they are on the premises “visiting a lawfully residing resident, or on the development conducting legitimate business.”
The police officer, who decides whether the person is to be barred, determines whether the person is a tenant or is there at the invitation of a tenant, or whether the reason for being there is legitimate. Thereafter, once a person is barred, he or she is subject to being prosecuted for trespass for being on the streets or sidewalks in Whitcomb Court even if the person is subsequently there at the invitation of a tenant or there on legitimate business. Thus, to be barred from Whitcomb Court, one does not have to be guilty of a crime in Whitcomb Court or to have done anything wrong, but rather, one simply has to fail to fit within the category of people who RRHA has deemed entitled to be on the streets and sidewalks in the public housing development. Once barred, the person who returns is a trespasser without regard to whether, on that *577subsequent occasion, he or she is there on legitimate business or at the invitation of a Whitcomb Court tenant.
The City is entitled, and is in fact required within constitutional limits, to control its streets and sidewalks so as to make them safe and to control crime thereon. However, it may not, in its endeavor to control crime on the streets, sweep so broadly that it unduly restricts or criminalizes innocent or protected behavior. Because the police officers have such broad discretion in determining whether a person, who was on the streets and sidewalks of the housing development, was there at the invitation of a tenant or was there for a “legitimate” purpose, the officers could, as they did here, bar a person from public property for exercising a constitutionally protected right. Once barred, the person continues to be barred and subject to a trespass conviction, as with Hicks, even though he or she may subsequently be there at the invitation of a tenant or for legitimate purposes. See generally NAACP v. Alabama, 377 U.S. 288, 307, 84 S.Ct. 1302, 1313, 12 L.Ed.2d 325 (1964). The evidence does not indicate that Hicks was initially barred because he had committed any unlawful act in Whitcomb Court.4 According to the unrefuted avowal of defense counsel, Hicks was barred from Whitcomb Court because he repeatedly returned there to visit his mother, his aunt, and the mother of his two infant children who live in Whitcomb Court. After being barred, Hicks was given written notice of his barment, for which he signed, from housing manager Gloria Rogers. On the occasion for which Hicks was subsequently charged with the trespass that is the subject of this appeal, he was walking on the sidewalk of the 2300 block of Bethel Street in Whitcomb Court and was purportedly there to see that his child, who lived there with its mother, received diapers.
*578The question presented in this appeal is whether the barment proceeding adopted by RRHA, which authorizes Richmond City police officers to banish people who do not fit within a narrowly defined group from coming upon the streets and sidewalks in Whitcomb Court, and the trespass statute as used to enforce the barment proceeding, violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The critical issue in answering that question is whether the streets and sidewalks are public and, as such, are a “traditional public forum,” or whether they are “private” and, thereby, a “non-public forum.”
The constitutionality of government regulation of its own property depends upon the character of the property at issue. For purposes of First Amendment analysis, the Supreme Court has identified three types of government-owned property: the traditional public forum, the designated forum, and the nonpublic forum. A traditional public forum, such as a street or park, is one that has as “a principal purpose ... the free exchange of ideas.” A designated forum is one which the government intentionally opens to the public for expressive activity.
Government limitations on expressive activity in traditional public fora and designated public fora are subject to strict scrutiny; they must be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest. By contrast “[a] nonpublic forum is ‘public property which is not by tradition or designation a forum for public communication,’ ” and limits on access to such need only be reasonable....
Daniel v. City of Tampa, 38 F.3d 546, 549 (11th Cir.1994) (citations omitted).
Although the grounds and buildings of a public housing development are a “non-public forum” designed to provide safe housing for its residents, see id. at 550, the public streets and sidewalks in Whitcomb Court are not private and do not lose their character as a “traditional public forum” merely because the City passes an ordinance and executes a deed declaring them to be private property. The streets and sidewalks have not been gated, barricaded, or closed in a manner restricting public travel. Although the “No Trespass*579ing” street signs declare that the streets are for the exclusive use of the tenants and those there on legitimate business, the streets and sidewalks continue to serve the same function as before and are equally accessible to the travelling public.
We have previously approved a process by which police officers may be designated as agents of a housing authority to serve barment notices on persons trespassing on housing authority property, see Collins v. Commonwealth, 30 Va.App. 443, 449, 517 S.E.2d 277, 280 (1999); Holland v. Commonwealth, 28 Va.App. 67, 70-76, 502 S.E.2d 145, 146-49 (1998). In Collins, we further held that the barment notices prohibiting non-residents from coming upon housing authority property do not violate the “right of association” protected by the First Amendment or the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Collins, 30 Va.App. at 450-53, 517 S.E.2d at 280-82. However, what distinguishes this case from those, in my opinion, is that Hicks was found guilty of trespass for having gone upon Bethel Street and the adjacent sidewalk, whereas in both Holland and Collins, the defendants were on the non-public grounds and in the buildings of the housing authority.
The majority relies upon the holding in Daniel, 38 F.3d 546, for its conclusion that the “trespass after warning” restriction the housing authority had placed upon access to a “non-public forum” was reasonable. In my opinion, Richmond City Ordinance No. 97-181-197, which authorizes deeding certain city streets to RRHA in an effort to “privatize” the streets in Whitcomb Court and make them subject to the Commonwealth’s trespass statute, Code § 18.2-119, did not make the street any less a public street or thoroughfare and did not make it a “non-public forum,” as was the situation in Daniel. The Eleventh Circuit held in Daniel that the mission of the housing authority was to provide safe housing for residents, not to provide non-residents “a place to disseminate ideas.” Thus, the buildings and grounds were considered a non-public forum for purposes of determining the extent to which the government could, consistent with the First Amendment, regulate the public’s activity on the property. See 38 F.3d at 550. *580However, the Daniel court was careful to point out that the Tampa “trespass after warning” ordinance did not apply to persons on the “streets and sidewalks surrounding and intersecting” the housing authority property. See id. at 548 n. 3, 550 n. 9.
“A traditional public forum, such as a street or park, is one that has as ‘a principal purpose ... the free exchange of ideas.’ ” Id at 549 (quoting Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense & Educ. Fund, Inc., 473 U.S. 788, 800, 105 S.Ct. 3439, 3448, 87 L.Ed.2d 567 (1985)). Bethel Street is a public street that was built and maintained with public funds to provide access by the public to that part of Richmond. As with all public streets and thoroughfares, historically and traditionally public streets have served as a locale for the free exchange and dissemination of ideas and have served as an area that .citizens can freely and lawfully congregate or move about and exchange discourse.
The fact that legal title to the streets is transferred from a municipal government to a government agency which owns and operates a public housing development in no way changes the public nature and character of the streets and sidewalks which provide access to the public to this part of the City. See Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501, 66 S.Ct. 276, 90 L.Ed. 265 (1946) (holding that privately owned streets and sidewalks in a company-owned town which are open to public access are traditional public forums that are circumscribed by First Amendment constitutional guarantees). The City cannot transform the public streets in Whitcomb Court into private or non-public streets by declaring them closed by ordinance and conveying them to another governmental entity when they continue to serve the same public purpose as before.
Thus, the City’s and RRHA’s effort to control conduct or the lawful freedom of movement on a city street, which is a “traditional public forum,” by “privatizing” the street and prohibiting citizens from using the streets and sidewalks must pass a strict scrutiny test. In order for the barment-trespass policy to satisfy the strict scrutiny test, the enforcement *581procedure must be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest, providing safe housing to the development residents. In my view, the RRHA’s privatization effort and barment procedure does not satisfy the requirement that the barment-trespass procedure be narrowly tailored because the procedure (1) infringes on the constitutionally protected right of a person’s freedom to “remove from one place to another according to inclination,” Williams v. Fears, 179 U.S. 270, 274, 21 S.Ct. 128, 129, 45 L.Ed. 186 (1900), and to move freely in a traditional public forum, see City of Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41, 54, 119 S.Ct. 1849, 1858, 144 L.Ed.2d 67 (1999) (holding “it is apparent that an individual’s decision to remain in a public place of his choice is as much a part of his liberty as the freedom of movement inside frontiers that is ‘a part of our heritage’ ”), and (2) is not limited to apply only to those persons whose conduct the procedure was intended to curtail. In other words, the sweep of the barment-trespass proceeding is so broad that citizens who do not infringe upon the privacy rights of the residents of Whitcomb Court are deemed guilty of criminal conduct for engaging in constitutionally protected public behavior by merely being upon the public street or sidewalk.
Perhaps, had Bethel Street been gated, barricaded, or physically restricted to traffic where the public was not free to travel, as with gated communities, the street would be considered non-public and not a “traditional public forum.” But, in my opinion, the City can no more “close” the streets in Whitcomb Court and leave them open to the public, thereby purporting to make them a “non-public forum,” than it could declare “closed” all streets in Richmond’s troubled neighborhoods and residential areas, thereby denying access to all citizens except the residents and their invitees and those having legitimate business in the neighborhoods. Neighborhood streets, such as those in Whitcomb Court, are public streets, paid for and maintained with public funds, for the use and benefit of the public.
While a public entity can restrict the use of public property or buildings to those who are using the property for its *582intended “non-public” purpose, such as an office building, it cannot restrict public property that is considered a “traditional public forum,” such as a street or sidewalk, that is being used in a lawful way and for a lawful purpose that is constitutionally protected. See United States v. Kokinda, 497 U.S. 720, 727, 110 S.Ct. 3115, 3120, 111 L.Ed.2d 571 (1990) (holding that sidewalk in front of post office “constructed solely to provide for the passage of individuals engaged in postal business” is a non-public forum). Here, in effect, the City and RRHA, by attempting to convert the streets and sidewalks to private property, are attempting to confer upon RRHA the same rights as a private property owner who may restrict everyone from coming upon the private property owner’s property except the owner’s tenants and the tenants’ invitees, regardless of whether the invitees had done anything unlawful. In fact, the City’s attempt to control access to the streets and sidewalks through the barment-trespass proceeding exceeds the right of a private landowner because under the barment proceeding, once barred, an invitee of a tenant can no longer lawfully come upon the property.
Accordingly, I would reverse Hicks’ trespass conviction, because Richmond’s barment-trespass procedure, in an effort to control drugs and criminal activity in and around a public housing development, unconstitutionally infringes upon a citizen’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights to lawfully congregate in a public place.5

. As the majority notes, Hicks was convicted of destroying private property in Whitcomb Court after he had been barred for being there not as a tenant or at the express invitation of a tenant. However, the conviction for destroying private property was irrelevant to the barment proceeding or to Hicks' trespass conviction.

. Because I would reverse on the failure of the City to establish that the barment-trespass procedure meets the strict scrutiny requirements, I do not address whether the barment-trespass procedure, .including notice, opportunity to be heard, and an administrative appeals procedure, satisfies the procedural due process requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment. Because the majority only addresses the vague and overbroad issue as they relate to the trespass statute procedure, I decline to address whether the barment-trespass procedure is vague or overbroad.