Court Opinion

ID: 9458224
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:45:54.551675+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:40.840275
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc
PELL, Circuit Judge.
This matter is before the court on a petition for rehearing and suggestion for rehearing en banc.
In its petition for rehearing, the Park District prayed in the alternative, if the judgment of the district court was not affirmed, as follows:
"That if this Court finds on the issue that Collin and his group have a constitutional right to assemble somewhere in Marquette Park, that it reverse the judgment of the Court below, direct the Court below to enter its order upon Collin and the National Socialist Party of America similar to paragraphs 1, 2, 3, 5 and 10 of the order entered by this Court in the Seese case, with directions to the Park District to provide a suitable area in Marquette Park for Collin’s assembly other than Area No. 3 on a date suggested by Collin.
“That if this Court holds that it can be a prior restraint upon freedom of speech and assembly for the Park District to refuse an application for speech and assembly in any specific park without offering another area in that park for such purposes, even though free forum areas are available in other parks within the District, that it require the Park District to initiate judicial review only in those cases where an application for a permit within a park is denied without an offer by the Park District of an alternative site within that park.”
Of necessity, the opinion of this court dealt with the posture of the factual situation presented. We do'not conceive it to be the function of the reviewing court to give advisory opinions in the nature of administrative guidelines for the determination of what may or may not be legitimate grounds for denial of a permit. The effect of the court’s opinion was that the permit could not be denied in the particular factual situation before us.
Nevertheless, by way of clarification of our opinion, it does not purport to say that specified areas in a large park, or indeed an entire small park, cannot be exclusively designated for activities such as family picnicking or athletic endeavors provided that such exclusive designation is in fact that and not a device to permit some to speak and to assemble for other purposes and discriminatorily to screen out others.
Likewise, where an entire park, or a specified area in a park, has legitimately and by provably bona fide action been booked for a particular time by a particular group or organization so as phys*761ically to be incapable of accommodating another group or organization, subsequent application by a second group or organization obviously could not be granted.
Further, the opinion does not preclude a denial of a permit for a requested area in a particular park where simultaneously there is made available an alternate site in the same park of equal potentiality for assembly and speech to that for which application was made. The four so-called free forum areas as demonstrated in the opinion did not meet this requirement.
Also, the opinion does not interdict explicit prior regulation of the time at which park facilities will be available for assemblies, if consistently and nondiscriminatorily observed as to all applicants, and if not so narrowly drawn as to be in effect prohibitory or chilling of expression at reasonable times and of reasonable duration.
Nothing in our opinion compels needless resort to judicial procedures in situations such as those hereinbefore set forth. We do say, however, that there must be a buttressing judicial decision where prior restraint is imposed upon the exercise of the freedom of assembly and the freedom of speech in the absence of uncontestably valid grounds for denial, which have no constitutional implications.
The petition for rehearing is denied. A majority of the active judges having not voted for a rehearing en banc, the suggestion of rehearing en banc is also denied.