Court Opinion

ID: 9427992
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:32.010328+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:11.051578
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Rehnquist,
with whom The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Blackmun join,
dissenting.
I address the merits of the Court’s constitutional decision first, although I also seriously question the appellees’ standing to assert the grounds for invalidity on which the Court apparently relies.1 One who reads the opinion of the Court is probably left with the impression that Illinois has enacted a residential picketing statute which reads: “All residential picketing, except for labor picketing,■ is prohibited.” 'Such an *473impression is entirely understandable; indeed, it is created by the Court’s own phrasing throughout the opinion. The Court asserts that Illinois, “in exempting from its general prohibition only the 'peaceful picketing of a place of employment involved in a labor dispute,’ . . . discriminates between lawful and unlawful conduct based upon . . . content. . . .” (Emphasis added.) Ante, at 460. It states that “information about labor disputes may be freely disseminated, but discussion of all other issues is restricted.” Ante, at 461. The Court finds that the permissibility of residential picketing in Illinois is dependent “solely on the nature of the message being conveyed.” Ibid. (Emphasis added.) And again the Court states that “Illinois has flatly prohibited all nonlabor picketing” while the statute is said to “broadly permi[t] all peaceful labor picketing.” Ante, at 462, 465.
Dissenting opinions are more likely than not to quarrel with the Court’s exposition of the law, but my initial quarrel is with the accuracy of the Court’s paraphrasing and selective quotation from the Illinois statute. The complete language of the statute, set out accurately in the text of the Court’s opinion, reveals a legislative scheme quite different from that described by the Court in its narrative paraphrasing of the enactment.2
The statute provides that residential picketing is prohibited, but goes on to exempt four categories of residences from this general ban. First, if the residence is used as a “place *474of business” all peaceful picketing is allowed. Second, if the residence is being used to “hol[d] a meeting or assembly on premises commonly used to discuss subjects of general public interest” all peaceful picketing is allowed. Third, if the residence is also used as a “place of employment” which is involved in a labor dispute, labor-related picketing is allowed. Finally, the statute provides that a resident is entitled to picket his own home. Thus it is clear that information about labor disputes may not be “freely disseminated” since labor picketing is restricted to a narrow category of residences. And Illinois has not “flatly prohibited all nonlabor picketing” since it allows nonlabor picketing at residences used as a place of business, residences used as public meeting places, and at an individual’s own residence.
Only through this mischaracterization of the Illinois statute may the Court attempt to fit this case into the Mosley rule prohibiting regulation on the basis of “content alone.” (Emphasis added.) Police Department of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U. S. 92, 96 (1972). For in Mosley, the sole determinant of an individual’s right to picket near a school was the content of the speech. As the Court today aptly observes, such a regulation warrants exacting scrutiny. In contrast, the principal determinant of a person’s right to picket a residence in Illinois is not content, as the Court suggests, .but rather the character of the residence sought to be picketed. Content is relevant only in one of the categories established by the legislature.
The cases appropriate to the analysis therefore are those establishing the limits on a State’s authority to impose time, place, and manner restrictions on speech activities. Under this rubric, even taking into account the limited content distinction made by the statute, Illinois has readily satisfied its constitutional obligation to draft statutes in conformity with First Amendment and equal protection principles. In fact, the very statute which the Court today cavalierly invalidates has been hailed by commentators as “an excellent model” of *475legislation achieving a delicate balance among rights to privacy, free expression, and equal protection. See Kamin, Residential Picketing and the First Amendment, 61 Nw. U. L. Rev. 177, 207 (1966); Comment, 34 U. Chi. L. Rev. 106, 139 (1966). The state legislators of the Nation will undoubtedly greet today’s decision with nothing less than exasperation and befuddlement. Time after time, the States have been assured that they may properly promote residential privacy even though free expression must be reduced. To be sure, our decisions have adopted a virtual laundry list of “Don’ts” that must be adhered to in the process. Heading up that list of course is the rule that legislatures must curtail free expression through the “least restrictive means” consistent with the accomplishment of their purpose, and they must avoid standards which are either vague or capable of discretionary application. But somewhere, the Court says in these cases (with a reassuring pat on the head to the legislatures), there is the constitutional pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of litigation.
Here, where Illinois has drafted such a statute, avoiding an outright ban on all residential picketing, avoiding reliance on any vague or discretionary standards, and permitting categories of permissible picketing activity at residences where the State has determined the resident’s own actions have substantially reduced his interest in privacy, the Court in response confronts the State with the “Catch-22” that the less restrictive categories are constitutionally infirm under principles of equal protection. Under the Court’s approach today, the State would fare better by adopting more restrictive means, a judicial incentive I had thought this Court would hesitate to afford. Either that, or uniform restrictions will be found invalid under the First Amendment and categorical exceptions found invalid under the Equal Protection Clause, with the result that speech and only speech will be entitled to protection. This can only mean that the hymns of praise in prior opinions celebrating carefully drawn statutes are no *476more than sympathetic clucking, and in fact the State is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t.
Equally troublesome is the methodology by which these difficult questions of constitutional law have been reached. The Court today figuratively walked a country mile to find a potential unconstitutional application of this statute, and it is primarily on that potential which the total nullification of this statute rests. Just because it is a statute which is in issue does not relieve this Court of its duty to decide only the concrete controversy presented by the case. As discussed below, I think it quite clear that the statute does not prohibit the appellees in this action from engaging in conduct which must be protected under the First Amendment, the state interests would not be satisfied by a statute employing less restrictive means, the statute is not facially overbroad by prohibiting conduct which clearly must be permitted under the First Amendment, and the appellees have not themselves been denied equal protection because they do not seek to picket under circumstances which are indistinguishable from the circumstances where picketing is allowed. Only by speculating that there might be an individual or group that will be denied equal protection by the statute can the Court invalidate it. This is speculation this Court is not permitted to indulge in when nullifying the acts of a legislative branch.
I
The Illinois statute in issue simply does not contravene the First Amendment.
A
Repeatedly, this Court has upheld state authority to restrict the time, place, and manner of speech, if those regulations “protect a substantial governmental interest unrelated to the suppression of free expression” and are narrowly tailored, limiting the restrictions to those reasonably necessary to protect the substantial government interest. Brown v. Glines, *477444 U. S. 348, 354 (1980); Tillage of Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Environment, 444 U. S. 620 (1980). This standard of measuring permissible state regulation, often echoed in this Court’s opinions, is readily satisfied in this case.
The interest which the State here seeks to protect is residential privacy, as clearly demonstrated by the legislature’s statement of purpose. Ante, at 464, n. 8. When a residence is used for exclusively residential purposes, the State recognizes no exception to the ban on picketing. As in this case, it has not been asserted that Mayor Bilandic’s home fell into any category other than a residence used solely for residential purposes. The appellees nevertheless assert that their interest in publicizing their opinions on the issue of school integration outweigh the State’s asserted interest in protecting residential privacy.
Our cases simply do not support such a construction of the First Amendment. In Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U. S. 77, 81 (1949), the state interest in preventing interference with the “social activities in which [city residents] are engaged or the quiet that they would like to enjoy” warranted the prohibition of sound trucks on residential streets. In Rowan v. United States Post Office Dept., 397 U. S. 728, 736 (1970), this Court held that “[t]he right of every person ‘to be let alone’ must be placed in the scales with the right of others to communicate.” The Court recognized a “very basic right to be free from sights, sounds, and tangible matter we do not want” in the home. Ibid. These interests were sufficient to justify a resident’s ability to absolutely preclude delivery of unwanted mail to his address. Similarly, in FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U. S 726, 748 (1978), the Court found that an offensive broadcast could be absolutely banned from the airwaves because it “confronts the citizen, not only in public, but also in the privacy of the home, where the individual’s right to be left alone plainly outweighs the First Amendment rights of an intruder.” Under these authorities, the ap-*478pellees have no fundamental First Amendment right to picket in front of a residence.
B
Nor can it be said that the state interest could be fully protected by a less restrictive statute. An absolute ban on picketing at residences used solely for residential purposes permissibly furthers the state interest in protecting residential privacy. The State could certainly conclude that the presence of even a solitary picket in front of a residence is an intolerable intrusion on residential privacy. The Court today suggests that some picketing activities would have but a “negligible impact on privacy interests,” intimating that Illinois could satisfy its interests through more limited restrictions on picketing, such as regulating the hours and numbers of pickets. Ante, at 469. But I find nothing in the cases of this Court to suggest that a State may not permissibly conclude that even one individual camped in front of the home is unacceptable. It is the State, and not this Court, which legislates to prohibit evils which its citizens find unescapable, subject only to the limitations of the United States Constitution. Unlike sound trucks, it is not just the distraction of the noise which is in issue — it is the very presence of an unwelcome visitor at the home. As a Wisconsin court described in Wauwatosa v. King, 49 Wis. 2d 398, 411-412, 182 N. W. 2d 530, 537 (1971):
“To those inside . . . the home becomes something less than a home when and while the picketing . . . continue [s]. . . . [The] tensions and pressures may be psychological, not physical, but they are not, for that reason, less inimical to family privacy and truly domestic tranquility.”
Whether noisy or silent, alone or accompanied by others, whether on the streets or on the sidewalk, I think that there are few of us that would feel comfortable knowing that a *479stranger lurks outside our home. The State’s prohibition of this conduct is even easier to justify than regulations previously upheld by this Court limiting mailings and broadcasts into the home. In Rowan, as in Pacifica, the resident at least could have short-circuited the annoyance by throwing away the mail or turning off the radio. Even that alternative redress, however, was held not sufficient to preclude the legislative authorities from prohibiting the initial intrusion. Where, as here, the resident has no recourse of escape whatsoever, the State may quite justifiably conclude that the protection afforded by a statute such as this seems even more necessary.
C
Thus the appellees cannot secure the invalidation of this statute by urging that they seek to engage in expression which must be protected by the First Amendment or by demonstrating that a statute less restrictive of picketing would satisfy the state interest. On occasion this Court has, of course, permitted invalidation of a statute even though the plaintiff’s conduct was not protected if the statute clearly “sweeps within its prohibitions what may not be punished under the First . . . Amendmen[t].” Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U. S. 104, 114-115 (1972).
But this statute satisfies even the overbreadth challenge. It is arguable that when a resident has voluntarily used his home for nonresidential uses in a way which reduces the resident’s privacy interest, and the person seeking to picket the home has no alternative forum for effectively airing the grievance because it relates to this nonresidential use of the home, some form of residential picketing might be protected under the First Amendment. The courts which have found general prohibitions on residential picketing to be permissible under the First Amendment have considered the question more difficult under such circumstances. For example, in Walinsky v. Kennedy, 94 Misc. 2d 121, 404 N. Y. S. 2d 491 (1977), the *480New York court enjoined all residential picketing but concluded that
“[a] more difficult question would be raised if the [resident’s] office were in his home and there was thus no other suitable forum wherein he could be confronted or the picket’s viewpoints could be heard.” Id., at 132, n. 15, 404 N. Y. S. 2d, at 498, n. 15.
Similarly, in Hibbs v. Neighborhood Organization to Rejuvenate Tenant Housing, 433 Pa. 578, 580, 252 A. 2d 622, 623-624 (1969), the court found that a slumlord could be picketed at his home, but only because he effectively operated his business out of his residence and no other alternative situs was available to air the dispute. This Court has intimated a similar concern in dicta in Senn v. Tile Layers, 301 U. S. 468 (1937). There the right of laborers under a state statute to picket the residence of an employer who operated his business in his home was upheld, and the Court went on to say that “[m] embers of a union might, without special statutory authorization by a state, make known the facts of a labor dispute, for freedom of speech is guaranteed by the Federal Constitution.” Id., at 478.
I would by no means say without more that the State would have to permit such residential picketing, but such circumstances would, as the courts have found, present the greatest potential for a complaint of overbreadth. The State in the present case has forestalled any such challenge, however, by exempting such groups from the ban on residential picketing. Whether required by the Constitution or not, such exemptions are the concern of this Court only if they violate the Constitution. This Court in fact upheld enforcement of a statute permitting similar residential picketing in Senn v. Tile Layers, supra. Since the State has a legitimate interest in protecting speech activity and in particular, providing a forum where no other is reasonably available, excluding residences used for nonresidential purposes from the general *481prohibition on residential picketing is an entirely rational legislative policy, even if not mandated by the First Amendment. Thus no overbreadth challenge should succeed here.
II
Even though the statute does not prohibit conduct which is protected, the statute must also survive the hurdle of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. By choosing a less-restrictive-means approach and excluding pickets at residences used for nonresidential purposes from the general prohibition, the Court concludes the State has violated equal protection. I do not think this result can be sustained because the appellees have not been denied equal protection and that is the only question this Court may properly review.
A
Police Department of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U. S. 92 (1972), states a standard by which equal protection requirements in the First Amendment context must be measured. The Court in that case identified the “crucial question” as “whether there is an appropriate governmental interest suitably furthered by the differential treatment” of the appellees’ picketing. Id., at 95. The interest asserted by the city was the prevention of disruption in the schools. Thus the statute, to satisfy Mosley, should have prohibited all picketing which could reasonably be categorized as disruptive. Yet the ordinance permitted labor picketing while prohibiting picketing relating to race discrimination (and all other nonlabor topics), even though both forms of picketing were equally disruptive.
Thus the question is whether the State has a substantial interest in differentiating between the picketing which ap-pellees seek to conduct and the picketing which is permitted under the statute. For equal protection does not require that “things which are different in fact ... be treated in law *482as though they were the same.” Tigner v. •Texas, 310 U. S. 141, 147 (1940). Appellees seek to picket a residence to voice their views on school integration. There has been no showing that the resident has used his home for nonresidentia! purposes, or that no other forum is available where appellees may publicize their dispute.3 All pickets who fall within this category, no matter what the content of their expression may be, are prohibited from residential picketing. School integration, public housing, labor disputes, and the recognition of Red China are treated alike in this respect. The State has differentiated only when the residence has been used as a place of business, a place for public meetings, or a place of employment, or is occupied by the picket himself. In each of these categories, the State has determined that the resident has waived some measure of privacy through voluntary use of his home for these purposes.
Our cases clearly support a State’s authority to design the permissibility of picketing in relation to the use to which a particular building is put. As stated in Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U. S., at 116: “The nature of a place, 'the pattern of its normal activities, dictate the kinds of regulations of time, place, and manner that are reasonable.’ . . . The crucial question is whether the manner of expression is basically incompatible with the normal activity of a particular place at a particular time.” The fact that all areas could be classified as school grounds, however, would not mean that all school grounds had to be subject to the same restrictions. As the Court in Grayned noted: “Different considerations, of course, apply in different circumstances. For example, re*483strictions appropriate to a single-building high school during class hours would be inappropriate in many open areas on a college campus. . . .” Id., at 120, n. 45. And just as surely the State may differentiate between residences used exclusively for residential purposes and those which are not. It is far from nonsensical or arbitrary for a legislature to conclude that privacy interests are reduced when the residence is used for these other purposes. In another First Amendment case, Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U. S. 49, 61 (1973), we stated: “From the beginning of civilized societies, legislators and judges have acted on various unprovable assumptions. Such assumptions underlie much lawful state regulation of commercial and business affairs.”
Despite the state interest in treating residences which are used for nonresidential purposes differently from residences which are not, the Court finds that the categories are improper because there is an element of content regulation in the statutory scheme. While content is clearly not the principal focus of the statutory categories, since content is only relevant in the one subcategory of “places of employment,” the content restriction is quite clearly related to a legitimate state purpose. When an individual hires an employee to perform services in his home, it would not seem reasonable to conclude that the resident had so greatly compromised his residential status so as to permit picketing on any subject. The State may quite properly decide that the balance is better struck by the rule embodied in this statute which recognizes a more limited waiver of privacy interests by allowing only picketing relating to any labor dispute involving the resident as employer which has arisen out of the resident’s choice of using his residence as a place of employment.
Content regulation, when closely related to a permissible state purpose, is clearly permitted. Surely the Court would not prohibit a city from preventing an individual from interrupting an orderly city council discussion of public housing to orate on the vices or virtues of nuclear power. Yet this is *484content regulation. More accurately, it is restriction of topics to those appropriate to the forum. In this case, the forum is a confined one- — residences used as a place of employment— and clearly labor picketing in that forum is the relevant topic.
This differentiation is supported by Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U. S. 559 (1965). There the Court upheld a state prohibition on picketing in front of a government building which was used as a courthouse if the content of the picketing could be presumed to demonstrate an intent to influence the judiciary. In Cox then, because of the nature of the state interest invoked, both the content of the picketing as well as the use of the building were considered determinative. The Court noted that if a mayor had an office in the courthouse and individuals were picketing on a topic relevant to the mayor, rather than the judiciary, then the speech would be permissible. Thus use and content, or as Mr. Justice Stevens stated for the plurality in Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., 427 U. S. 50 (1976), “content and context” are important determinants. As in Cox, a State need not treat residences which are used for different purposes in the same fashion, and when reasonably related to the state purpose, distinctions in content are permissible. See also FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U. S. 726 (1978); Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville, 422 U. S. 205 (1975); Young v. American Mini Theatres, supra.
The question, therefore, is not whether there is some differentiation on the basis of content, but whether the ap-pellees’ prohibited conduct can be said to share the same characteristics of the conduct which is permitted. The Court devotes less than one page to what purports to be an equal protection analysis of this determinative question. In fact, only one sentence relates to the differences between the litigants in this case and the permitted picketing:
“And, with particular regard to the facts of the instant case, it borders on the frivolous to suggest that a resi*485dent who invites a repairman into his home to fix his television set has ‘waived’ his right to privacy with respect to a dispute between the repairman and the local union, but that the official who has voluntarily chosen to enter the public arena has not likewise ‘waived’ his right to privacy with respect to a challenge to his views on significant issues of social and economic policy.” Ante, at 469.
First, it is unclear whether the Illinois statute would be construed to permit the type of labor picketing described in the Court’s example where the dispute is not between the employer and the employee.4 Second, the fact that an official has chosen to enter the public arena has no bearing on the question of how he uses his residence — the only question of relevance'to the Illinois Legislature. Further, just as the State had an interest in Cox in preventing picketing which might tend to improperly influence the judicial process, the State certainly has an equal interest in preventing residential picketing of their officials where the result might be influence through the harassment of the official’s family. This is not the type of influence that a democratic society has traditionally held high as a part of the Bill of Rights. Finally, at least in the case of the repairman, the home in fact is the situs of the publicized dispute, while the Mayor’s home is not. The appellees do not seek to picket the situs of the dispute; they do not seek to picket the home of an individual who has used his residence for nonresidential purposes relevant to that dispute; they have not established the unavailability of any alternative forum. These are the characteristics of residen*486tial picketing which the State has allowed. The appellees have thereby failed to establish that they seek to picket under circumstances rationally indistinguishable from the circumstances under which the State has permitted picketing. They have therefore not been denied equal protection.
B
The Court makes little effort to establish that the appellees seek to picket under circumstances which are indistinguishable from the picketing permitted under the statute. Instead, it places the fulcrum of its equal protection argument on the fact that there might well be other actions of a homeowner which would constitute a “nonresidential” use of his property, warranting additional statutory exceptions. While I am not persuaded that the Court has identified an example of another picket who should likewise be permitted to picket under the justification forwarded by the State,5 the flaws in *487the analysis are more fundamental. First, the fact that there may be someone other than the appellees who has a right to be treated similarly to those permitted to picket is irrelevant to the question of constitutional validity in this case. The Court apparently believes it has a license to import the more relaxed standing requirements of First Amendment over-breadth into equal protection challenges. This, however, is not and should not be the law. Precedent supports no such approach and the rationale underlying the expanded standing principles in the overbreadth context are inapposite in the equal protection realm.
As we stated in Grayned, standing to challenge an ordinance which has been constitutionally applied to the plaintiff is permitted because otherwise the statute, if allowed to stand until a later challenge, will “deter privileged activity.” 408 U. S., at 114. In the equal protection context, however, we are not concerned that conduct which must be permitted under the First Amendment will be prohibited, but only that conduct which could be and is properly prohibited be permitted if indistinguishable from other permitted conduct. The impact on speech is therefore a minimal one, while the jurisprudential considerations for declining to consider alternative applications loom large.
In Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S. 249, 256 (1953), an equal protection case, the Court identified the ordinary rule that, “even though a party will suffer a direct substantial injury *488from application of a statute, he cannot challenge its constitutionality unless he can show that he is within the class whose constitutional rights are allegedly infringed.” The Court justified the rule, stating:
“One reason for this ruling is that the state court, when actually faced with the question, might narrowly construe the statute to obliterate the objectionable feature, or it might declare the unconstitutional provision separable. New York ex rel. Hatch v. Reardon, [204 U. S.], at 160-161. ... It would indeed be undesirable for this Court to consider every conceivable - situation which might possibly arise in the application of complex and comprehensive legislation. Nor are we so ready to frustrate the expressed will of Congress or that of the state legislatures. Cf. Southern Pacific Co. v. Gallagher, 306 U. S. 167, 172.” Id., at 256-257.
More recently in Craig v. Boren, 429 U. S. 190, 193 (1976), we emphasized that standing is “designed to minimize unwarranted intervention into controversies where the applicable constitutional questions are ill-defined and speculative.” Sound principles of standing simply do not permit this Court to entertain any claim by the appellees in this action that someone other than themselves might be denied equal protection by the operation of the statute. See also Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., 427 U. S., at 58-59, 60; Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U. S. 601 (1973). This consideration is particularly compelling in this case since the appellees had an opportunity to seek a limiting construction of the statute by the Illinois courts when originally prosecuted for their picketing, but chose to plead guilty instead, thereby denying the one court system that could authoritatively limit the statute the opportunity to do so.
Even if this Court could properly take cognizance of the fact that some identifiable person not clearly encompassed in the statutory categories permitting picketing should also be *489allowed to picket, under equal protection standards, that fact alone would not justify wholesale invalidation of the entire statutory framework. In Califano v. Jobst, 434 U. S. 47, 53-55 (1977), this Court emphasized that sound equal protection analysis must uphold general rules “even though such rules inevitably produce seemingly arbitrary consequences in some individual cases,” and that “the broad legislative classification must be judged by reference to characteristics typical of the affected classes rather than by focusing on selected, atypical examples.” Any other standard of review, such as that employed by the Court today, will inevitably lead to invalidation, for this or any other court will always be able to conceive of a hypothetical not properly accounted for by the statutory categories. The state courts, if given an opportunity, have the tools to correct such minor deficiencies. This Court has soundly permitted state legislatures far more room for error in the drafting of its categories than what the Court today allows. As it stated in Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U. S. 629, 642-643 (1968), “[w]e do not demand of legislatures ‘scientifically certain criteria of legislation,’ Noble State Bank v. Haskell, 219 U. S. 104, 110.” And more recently, we recognized a compelling need to allow to local government “a reasonable opportunity to experiment with solutions to admittedly serious problems.” Young v. American Mini Theatres, supra, at 71.
I can conclude this dissent with no more apt words than those of Mr. Justice Frankfurter in his concurring opinion in Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U. S., at 97: “[I]t is not for us to supervise the limits the legislature may impose in safeguarding the steadily narrowing opportunities for serenity and reflection.”

 The Court premises its finding that the appellees have standing to challenge the statute at least in part on the basis of the appellant’s “concessions” at oral argument that the State was not persisting in its challenge to appellees’ standing in this Court. See ante, at 461, n. 5. But we have said that “[w]e are loath to attach conclusive weight to the relatively spontaneous responses of counsel to equally spontaneous questioning from the Court during oral argument.” Moose Lodge No. 107 v. Irvis, 407 U. S. 163, 170 (1972). Moreover, while appellant may have chosen not to challenge appellees’ standing to argue that they had been denied equal protection under the statute, appellant certainly did not concede that appellees had' standing to argue that other individuals desiring to picket under circumstances dissimilar to appellees might be denied equal protection under the statute. In fact, counsel quite explicitly stated that the Court should only consider the constitutionality of prohibiting the appellees’ conduct: “I would urge that the . . . First Amendment question only be as applied to the plaintiffs, to the conduct that the plaintiffs actually engaged in. . . .” Tr. of Oral Arg. 17. And this is the standing question that is implicated by the Court’s opinion. See infra, at 486-489.

 The simplistic construction of the statute reflected in the Court’s opinion apparently is also justified by supposed “concessions” of appellant’s counsel at oral argument. Ante, at 461, n. 5. Appellant, however, has never suggested that the statute regulates picketing solely by permitting labor, but not nonlabor, issues to be aired through residential picketing. While admitting the use of some content differentiation, the appellant asserts throughout his argument that the statute is a “place” regulation; it allows picketing at homes used for nonresidential purposes but not at those homes used exclusively for residential purposes. See, e.'g,, the question presented for review in the Juris. Statement 4.

 If it is the Mayor the appellees seek to reach, they have not shown they cannot do so at city hall. If it is the neighborhoods they seek to reach, they have not shown that they cannot do so in neighborhood parks. I think it is now clear that when speech interests are countered by other substantial governmental interests, the availability of another forum is a highly relevant factor in determining the appropriate balance. See Pell v. Procunier, 417 U. S. 817, 823-824 (1974).

 If given an opportunity, the Illinois courts might determine that many repairmen are not “employees” under the statute. Further, it is also possible that the state courts would limit the disputes covered by the exception to those between the resident and his employee. More importantly, these are questions with which this court should not be .concerned until the state courts have had an opportunity to address them. See infra, at 488.

 The Court identifies several examples of picketing which the State would allegedly have to allow in order to avoid a successful equal protection attack. The Court indicates that there is no ground for differentiating between the picketing which is permitted and picketing relating to landlord-tenant disputes, zoning disputes, and historic preservation issues. Ante, at 468-469, n. 13. The first of these examples seems particularly inappropriate since picketing in relation to landlord-tenant disputes would most likely be permissible under the statute just as written. The statute exempts picketing by an individual at his residence, so it would certainly appear that a tenant could picket in front of his own dwelling (which also happens to be the situs of the dispute). If the landlord operates his business out of his home, the tenants would also be able to picket there under the statute. Thus there is no reason to believe that the picketing opportunities of tenants have been substantially limited by the statutory classifications, and in fact would appear to be at least as broad as those afforded to employees with labor disputes. Zoning disputes and historic preservation issues are distinguishable in several respects. First, those issues have no relationship to the use of an individual’s residence (other than their own, which of course they may picket) and the individual resident would not have waived any privacy interests. *487Second, alternative forums would theoretically include residential parks as well as the office of the authorities responsible for the relevant decisions.
The Court’s citation of lawn decorations as a waiver of residential privacy seems odd since that act does not involve the voluntary admission of strangers into the home for some nonresidential purposes — a characteristic shared by each of the other exceptions. Ante, at 469. The Court’s citation of a political party meeting is also distinguishable since this example does not share the commercial attributes of the other exemptions — where “nonresidential use” seems most readily found. An alternative forum would also not seem difficult to obtain in those circumstances.