Court Opinion

ID: 9666383
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:13:05.712329+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:27.843950
License: Public Domain

CLINTON, Judge,
dissenting.
I am unable to conclude that § 42.05 is “readily subject to a narrowing construction.” Its language is plain and its meaning unambiguous; its constitutionality cannot turn upon a choice between one of several possible meanings. Nor can the statute be limited by severing discrete unconstitutional subsections from other subsections. The only way for the statute to be saved is for this Court to add considerable language to it; i.e., for us literally to engage in judicial legislation. See W. *582Steele, 38 Tex.B.J. at 254 (“[I]t is difficult to imagine how the appellate courts can narrow [§ 42.05] sufficiently to save [it] from uneonstitutionality.”); Houston v. Hill, 482 U.S. 451, 107 S.Ct. 2502, 96 L.Ed.2d 398 (ordinance is not susceptible to narrowing construction when its meaning is unambiguous); Erznoznik v. Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205, 216, 95 S.Ct. 2268, 2276, 45 L.Ed.2d 125 (1975) (ordinance in question “by its plain terms is not easily susceptible of a narrowing construction”).
Nevertheless, the majority tries its hand at legislation, amending the statute to forbid — presumably in the content of this cause — “only physical acts or verbal utterances that substantially impair the ordinary conduct of lawful meetings and thereby curtail the exercise of others’ First Amendment rights.” Slip Opinion, at 5 (emphasis in original). In my judgment, use of such subjective terms as “substantially”, “ordinary” and “curtail” now render the statute so vague and ambiguous as to jeopardize exercise of constitutionally protected rights by an actor and “others” as well.
We should hold that § 42.05 is facially overbroad in violation of the First Amendment as applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, reverse the judgments of the court of appeals and the trial court and order the prosecution dismissed.