Court Opinion

ID: 9423485
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:07:54.346907+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:39.679180
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Warren,
whom Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice Fortas join,
dissenting.
Petitioners in this case contend that they were convicted under an ordinance that is unconstitutional on its face because it submits their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights to free speech and peaceful assembly to the unfettered discretion of local officials. They further contend that the ordinance was unconstitutionally applied to them because the local officials used their discretion to prohibit peaceful demonstrations by a group whose political viewpoint the officials opposed. The Court does not dispute these contentions, but holds that petitioners may nonetheless be convicted and sent to jail because the patently unconstitutional ordinance was copied into an injunction — issued ex parte without prior notice or hearing on the request of the Commissioner of Public Safety — forbidding all persons having notice of the injunction to violate the ordinance without any limitation of time. I dissent because I do not believe that the fundamental protections of the Constitution were meant to be so easily evaded, or that “the civilizing hand of law” would be hampered in the slightest by enforcing the First Amendment in this case.
The salient facts can be stated very briefly. Petitioners are Negro ministers who sought to express their concern about racial discrimination in Birmingham, Alabama, by holding peaceful protest demonstrations in that *325city on Good Friday and Easter Sunday 1963. For obvious reasons, it was important for the significance of the demonstrations that they be held on those particular dates. A representative of petitioners’ organization went to the City Hall and asked “to see the person or persons in charge to issue permits, permits for parading, picketing, and demonstrating.” She was directed to Public Safety Commissioner Connor, who denied her request for a permit in terms that left no doubt that petitioners were not going to be issued a permit under any circumstances. “He said, ‘No, you will not get a permit in Birmingham, Alabama to picket. I will picket you over to the City Jail,’ and he repeated that twice.” A second, telegraphic request was also summarily denied, in a telegram signed by “Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor,” with the added information that permits could be issued only by the full City Commission, a three-man body consisting of Commissioner Connor and two others.1 According to petitioners’ offer *326of proof, the truth of which is assumed for purposes of this case, parade permits had uniformly been issued for all other groups by the city clerk on the request of the traffic bureau of the police department, which was under Commissioner Connor's direction. The requirement that the approval of the full Commission be obtained was applied only to this one group.
Understandably convinced that the City of Birmingham was not going to authorize their demonstrations under any circumstances, petitioners proceeded with their plans despite Commissioner Connor’s orders. On Wednesday, April 10, at 9 in the evening, the city filed in a state circuit court a bill of complaint seeking an ex parte injunction. The complaint recited that petitioners were engaging in a series of demonstrations as “part of a massive effort ... to forcibly integrate all business establishments, churches, and other institutions” in the city, with the result that the police department was strained in its resources and the safety, peace, and tranquility were threatened. It was alleged as particularly menacing that petitioners were planning to conduct “kneel-in” demonstrations at churches where their presence was not wanted. The city’s police dogs were said to be in danger of their lives. Faced with these recitals, the Circuit Court issued the injunction in the form requested, and in effect ordered petitioners and all other persons having notice of the order to refrain for an unlimited time from carrying on any demonstrations without a permit. A permit, of course, was clearly unobtain*327able; the city would not have sought this injunction if it had any intention of issuing one.
Petitioners were served with copies of the injunction at various times on Thursday and on Good Friday. Unable to believe that such a blatant and broadly drawn prior restraint on their First Amendment rights could be valid, they announced their intention to defy it and went ahead with the planned peaceful demonstrations on Easter weekend. On the following Monday, when they promptly filed a motion to dissolve the injunction, the court found them in contempt, holding that they had waived all their First Amendment rights by disobeying the court order.
These facts lend no support to the court’s charges that petitioners were presuming to act as judges in their own case, or that they had a disregard for the judicial process. They did not flee the jurisdiction or refuse to appear in the Alabama courts. Having violated the injunction, they promptly submitted themselves to the courts to test the constitutionality of the injunction and the ordinance it parroted. They were in essentially the same position as persons who challenge the constitutionality of a statute by violating it, and then defend the ensuing criminal prosecution on constitutional grounds. It has never been thought that violation of a statute indicated such a disrespect for the legislature that the violator always must be punished even if the statute was unconstitutional. On the contrary, some cases have required that persons seeking to challenge the constitutionality of a statute first violate it to establish their standing to sue.2 Indeed, it shows no disrespect for law to violate a statute on the ground that it is unconstitutional and then to submit one’s case to the courts with the willingness to accept the penalty if the statute is held to be valid.
*328The Court concedes that “[t]he generality of the language contained in the Birmingham parade ordinance upon which the injunction was based would unquestionably raise substantial constitutional issues concerning some of its provisions.” 3 Ante, p. 316. That concession is well-founded but minimal. I believe it is patently unconstitutional on its face. Our decisions have consistently held that picketing and parading are means of expression protected by the First Amendment, and that the right to picket or parade may not be subjected to the unfettered discretion of local officials. Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U. S. 536 (1965); Edwards v. South Carolina, 372 U. S. 229 (1963); Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U. S. 88 (1940). Although a city may regulate the manner of use of its streets and sidewalks in the interest of keeping them open for the movement of traffic, it may not allow local officials unbridled discretion to decide who shall be allowed to parade or picket and who shall not. “Wherever the title of streets and parks may rest, they have immemorially been held *329in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions. Such use of the streets and public places has, from ancient times, been a part of the privileges, immunities, rights, and liberties of citizens. The privilege of a citizen of the United States to use the streets and parks for communication of views on national questions may be regulated in the interest of all; it is not absolute, but relative, and must be exercised in subordination to the general comfort and convenience, and in consonance with peace and good order; but it must not, in the guise of regulation, be abridged or denied.” Hague v. C. I. O., 307 U. S. 496, 515-516 (1939) (opinion of Mr. Justice Roberts). When local officials are given totally unfettered discretion to decide whether a proposed demonstration is consistent with “public welfare, peace, safety, health, decency, good order, morals or convenience,” as they were in this case, they are invited to act as censors over the views that may be presented to the public.4 The unconstitutionality of the ordinance is compounded, of course, when there is convincing evidence that the officials have in fact used their power to deny permits to organizations whose views they dislike.5 The record in this case hardly suggests that Commissioner Connor and the other city officials were motivated in prohibiting civil rights picketing only by their overwhelming concern for particular traffic problems. Petitioners were given to *330understand that under no circumstances would they be permitted to demonstrate in Birmingham, not that a demonstration would be approved if a time and place were selected that would minimize the traffic difficulties. The only circumstance that the court can find to justify anything other than a per curiam reversal is that Commissioner Connor had the foresight to have the unconstitutional ordinance included in an ex parte injunction, issued without notice or hearing or any showing that it was impossible to have notice or a hearing, forbidding the world at large (insofar as it knew of the order) to conduct demonstrations in Birmingham without the consent of the city officials. This injunction was such potent magic that it transformed the command of an unconstitutional statute into an impregnable barrier, chal-lengeable only in what likely would have been protracted legal proceedings and entirely superior in the meantime even to the United States Constitution.
I do not believe that giving this Court’s seal of approval to such a gross misuse of the judicial process is likely to lead to greater respect for the law any more than it is likely to lead to greater protection for First Amendment freedoms. The ex parte temporary injunction has a long and odious history in this country, and its susceptibility to misuse is all too apparent from the facts of the case. As a weapon against strikes, it proved so effective in the hands of judges friendly to employers that Congress was forced to take the drastic step of removing from federal district courts the jurisdiction to issue injunctions in labor disputes.6 The labor injunction fell into disrepute largely because it was abused in precisely the same way that the injunctive power was abused in this case. Judges who were not sympathetic to the union cause commonly issued, without notice or *331hearing, broad restraining orders addressed to large numbers of persons and forbidding them to engage in acts that were either legally permissible or, if illegal, that could better have been left to the regular course of criminal prosecution. The injunctions might later be dissolved, but in the meantime strikes would be crippled because the occasion on which concerted activity might have been effective had passed7 Such injunctions, so long discredited as weapons against concerted labor activities, have now been given new life by this Court as weapons against the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. Respect for the courts and for judicial process was not increased by the history of the labor injunction.8
Nothing in our prior decisions, or in the doctrine that a party subject to a temporary injunction issued by a court of competent jurisdiction with power to decide a dispute properly before it must normally challenge the injunction in the courts rather than by violating it, requires that we affirm the convictions in this case. The majority opinion in this case rests essentially on a single precedent, and that a case the authority of *332which has clearly been undermined by subsequent decisions. Howat v. Kansas, 258 U. S. 181 (1922), was decided in the days when the labor injunction was in fashion. Kansas had adopted an Industrial Relations Act, the purpose of which in effect was to provide for compulsory arbitration of labor disputes by a neutral administrative tribunal, the “Court of Industrial Relations.” Pursuant to its jurisdiction to investigate and perhaps improve labor conditions in the coal mining industry, the “Court” subpoenaed union leaders to appear and testify. In addition, the State obtained an injunction to prevent a strike while the matter was before the “Court.” The union leaders disobeyed both the subpoena and the injunction, and sought to challenge the constitutionality of the Industrial Relations Act in the ensuing contempt proceeding. The Kansas Supreme Court held that the constitutionality of the Act could not be challenged in a contempt proceeding, and this Court upheld that determination.
Insofar as Howat v. Kansas might be interpreted to approve an absolute rule that any violation of a void court order is punishable as contempt, it has been greatly modified by later decisions. In In re Green, 369 U. S. 689 (1962), we reversed a conviction for contempt of a state injunction forbidding labor picketing because the petitioner was not allowed to present evidence that the labor dispute was arguably subject to the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board and hence not subject to state regulation. If an injunction can be challenged on the ground that it deals with a matter arguably subject to the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board, then a fortiori it can be challenged on First Amendment grounds.9
*333It is not necessary to question the continuing validity of the holding in Howat v. Kansas, however, to demonstrate that neither it nor the Mine Workers10 case supports the holding of the majority in this case. In Howat the subpoena and injunction were issued to enable the Kansas Court of Industrial Relations to determine an underlying labor dispute. In the Mine Workers case, the District Court issued a temporary antistrike injunction to preserve existing conditions during the time it took to decide whether it had authority to grant the Government relief in a complex and difficult action of enormous importance to the national economy. In both cases the orders were of questionable legality, but in both cases they were reasonably necessary to enable the court or administrative tribunal to decide an underlying controversy of considerable importance before it at the time. This case involves an entirely different situation. The Alabama Circuit Court did not issue this temporary injunction to preserve existing conditions while it proceeded to decide some underlying dispute. There was no underlying dispute before it, and the court in practical effect merely added a judicial signature to a preexisting criminal ordinance. Just as the court had no need to issue the injunction to preserve its ability to *334decide some underlying dispute, the city had no need of an injunction to impose a criminal penalty for demonstrating on the streets without a permit. The ordinance already accomplished that. In point of fact, there is only one apparent reason why the city sought this injunction and why the court issued it: to make it possible to punish petitioners for contempt rather than for violating the ordinance, and thus to immunize the unconstitutional statute and its unconstitutional application from any attack. I regret that this strategy has been so successful.
It is not necessary in this case to decide precisely what limits should be set to the Mine Workers doctrine in cases involving violations of the First Amendment. Whatever the scope of that doctrine, it plainly was not intended to give a State the power to nullify the United States Constitution by the simple process of incorporating its unconstitutional criminal statutes into judicial decrees. I respectfully dissent.

 The uncontradicted testimony relating to the rebuffs of petitioners’ attempts to obtain a permit is set out in footnotes 9 and 10 of the majority opinion. Petitioners were prevented by a ruling of the trial court from introducing further proof of the intransigence of Commissioner Connor and the other city officials toward any effort by Negroes to protest segregation and racial injustice. The attitude of the city administration in general and of its Public Safety Commissioner in particular are a matter of public record, of course, and are familiar to this Court from previous litigation. See Shuttles-worth v. City of Birmingham, 382 U. S. 87 (1965); Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, 376 U. S. 339 (1964); Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, 373 U. S. 262 (1963); Gober v. City of Birmingham, 373 U. S. 374 (1963); In re Shuttlesworth, 369 U. S. 35 (1962). The United States Commission on Civil Rights found continuing abuse of civil rights protesters by the Birmingham police, including use of dogs, clubs, and firehoses. 1963 Report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights 114 (Government Printing Office, 1963). Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor, a self-proclaimed white supremacist (see Congress and the Nation 1945-1964: A Review of Government and Politics in the Postwar Years 1604 (Con*326gressional Quarterly Service, 1965)), made no secret of his personal attitude toward the rights of Negroes and the decisions of this Court. He vowed that racial integration would never come to Birmingham, and wore a button inscribed “Never” to advertise that vow. Yet the Court indulges in speculation that these civil rights protesters might have obtained a permit from this city and this man had they made enough repeated applications.

 See United Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U. S. 75, 86-94 (1947).

 The opinion does speculate that the Alabama courts might have saved the ordinance by giving the licensing authority granted in the ordinance “a narrow and precise scope,” as did the New Hampshire courts in Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U. S. 569 (1941), and Poulos v. New Hampshire, 345 U. S. 395 (1953). This suggestion ignores the fact that the statute in Cox and the ordinance in Poulos merely provided that licenses for parades and certain other gatherings must be obtained. They did not authorize local officials to determine whether the proposed parade was consistent with “the public welfare, peace, safety, health, decency, good order, morals or convenience,” as does the Birmingham ordinance involved in this case, and so it was perfectly consistent with the statutory language for the New Hampshire Supreme Court to hold that under the statute and ordinance parade applicants had a right to a license “with regard only to considerations of time, place and manner so as to conserve the public convenience.” 312 U. S., at 575-576. By contrast, the Alabama courts could only give a narrow and precise scope to the Birmingham ordinance by repealing some of its language.

 Staub v. City of Baxley, 355 U. S. 313 (1958); Kunz v. New York, 340 U. S. 290 (1951); Niemotko v. Maryland, 340 U. S. 268 (1951); Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296 (1940).
“I believe that the First and Fourteenth Amendments require that if the streets of a town are open to some views, they must be open to all.” Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U. S. 536, 580 (1965) (opinion of Mr. Justice Black).

 Niemotko v. Maryland, supra.

 The Norris-LaGuardia Act, 1932, 47 Stat. 70, 29 U. S. C. §§ 101-115.

 Frankfurter & Greene, The Labor Injunction 47-81 (1930); Cox & Bok, Cases and Materials on Labor Law 101-107 (1962).

 “The history of the labor injunction in action puts some matters beyond question. In large part, dissatisfaction and resentment are caused, first, by the refusal of courts to recognize that breaches of the peace may be redressed through criminal prosecution and civil action for damages, and, second, by the expansion of a simple, judicial device to an enveloping code of prohibited conduct, absorbing, en masse, executive and police functions and affecting the livelihood, and even lives, of multitudes. Especially those zealous for the unimpaired prestige of our courts have observed how the administration of law by decrees which through vast and vague phrases surmount law, undermines the esteem of courts upon which our reign of law depends. Not government, but ‘government by injunction,’ characterized by the consequences of a criminal prosecution without its safeguards, has been challenged.” Frankfurter & Greene, supra, at 200.

 The attempt in footnote 6 of the majority opinion to distinguish In re Green is nothing but an attempt to alter the holding of that case. The opinion of the Court states flatly that “a state court is *333without power to hold one in contempt for violating an injunction that the state court had no power to enter by reason of federal preemption.” 369 U. S., at 692 (footnote omitted). The alleged circumstance that the court issuing the injunction had agreed to its violation as an appropriate means of testing its validity was considered only in a concurring opinion. Although the petitioner in Green had attempted to challenge the order in court before violating it, we did not rely on that fact in holding that the order was void. Nor is it clear to me why the Court regards this fact as important, unless it means to imply that the petitioners in this case would have been free to violate the court order if they had first made a motion to dissolve in the trial court.

 United States v. United Mine Workers, 330 U. S. 258 (1947).