Court Opinion

ID: 9546309
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:27:24.409041+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:16:15.752965
License: Public Domain

CARTER, J.
I dissent.
The sound trucks involved in the present controversy were being used on the highways and on roads adjacent to farms for the purpose of attracting the attention of farm workers as a means of inducing them to quit work and engage in a strike to enforce union demands for higher wages.
According to the majority opinion the question presented for determination is whether the prohibition of the ordinance under consideration is a reasonable one.
The ordinance (No. 415, clause (3) of subdivision (d) of section 2.) with which we are here concerned defines “loud *72and raucous noise” as “The human voice or any record or recording thereof when amplified by any device whether electrical or mechanical or otherwise to such an extent as to cause it to carry on to private property or to be heard by others using the public highways or public thoroughfares.” The majority construes this to mean that no absolute prohibition was intended by the ordinance and finds it “unnecessary to decide whether an absolute prohibition within the limits of a county or municipality may be upheld.” It is concluded that the county, in the exercise of the police power of the state, has a legitimate interest in the preservation of the safety and tranquillity of its citizens and that the ordinance is reasohably directed to that end.
The majority reasons that the ordinance does not constitute an “absolute prohibition” because all use of “loud-speaking” devices are not banned “but only the amplification of the human voice ‘to such an extent as to cause it to carry on to private property or to be heard by others using the public highways or public thoroughfares. ’ Other uses, such as broadcasting music or even the human voice when not amplified, are not excluded. Moreover, the prohibition extends only to a ‘public highway or public thoroughfare or from any aircraft. ’ The use of such devices in other locations, such as private property, public parks, squares and meeting places, and similar places normally devoted to public assembly is not in any manner limited.” (Emphasis added.)
The unmistakable import of this statement is that the ordinance absolutely prohibits only the amplification of the human voice on the highways .and thoroughfares. A prohibition against amplification of the human voice so as “to be heard by others” in such places silences it completely and constitutes a violation of the express mandate of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States—that freedom of speech shall not be abridged. In singling out the amplification of the human voice as the “only” thing prohibited by the clause of the ordinance in question the majority clearly discriminates against human speech and the free dissemination of ideas thereby because without amplification so that it can be heard by others, freedom to use the human voice on the highways and thoroughfares is a freedom without value.
It should be remembered, however, that we are not concerned with something which might be done on “private property, public parks, squares and meeting places” but that *73which, may, or may not be done, on public highways and thoroughfares. The right of free speech guaranteed by the Constitution includes not only the right to be free from restraints on speech in the privacy of one’s own home, but the right, subject to reasonable regulation, to speak in other places where people may be reached. As the Supreme Court of the United States said in Saia v. New York, 334 U.S. 558 [68 S.Ct. 1148, 92 L.Ed. 1574], “Loud-speakers are today indispensable instruments of effective public speech. The sound truck has become an accepted method of political campaigning. It is the way people are reached. ...” What may be permitted in some other place has no bearing whatsoever on the public highways and thoroughfares; what may be permitted in the way of the normal human voice or music on highways is immaterial when one considers that the human voice is effectively silenced when not amplified through a loud-speaker when ideas are sought to be disseminated from the public highway. One may cry aloud his ideas in the wilderness, but that is surely not an effective way to share those ideas with the segment of the public one wishes to reach. To prohibit the use of sound trucks on public highways and thoroughfares is to prohibit the dissemination of ideas to a segment of the population which probably could be reached in no other way. Sound trucks on public highways are the way many “people are reached.” A writer in 34 Cornell Law Quarterly 626 points out with considerable merit that it is unrealistic to argue that what is meant by freedom of speech is the native power of human speech. The fact that earlier holdings of the court only went so far as to uphold .the right of unamplified speech does not imply that “. . . one is not to have the exercise of his liberty of expression in appropriate places abridged on the plea that it may be exercised in some other place.” (Schneider v. Irvington, 308 U.S. 147, 163 [60 S.Ct. 146, 84 L.Ed. 155].) Similarly, it is unsound to argue that one may not be permitted to use a loud-speaker because free speech could be exercised in some other manner—that is, without an amplifying device. The broad language of the various opinions makes it plain that constitutional free speech is not limited to ancient forms of expression.
In Saia v. New York, supra (334 U.S. 558, 559, 560, 561) where a permit was required for the use of a sound truck, Mr. Justice Douglas speaking for a majority of the court, said that the ordinance in question “. . . establishes a pre*74vieras restraint on the right of free speech in violation of the First Amendment which is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against State action. To use a loud-speaker or amplifier one has to get a permit from the Chief of Police. There are no standards prescribed for the exercise of his discretion. The statute is not narrowly drawn to regulate the hours or places of use of loud-speakers, or the volume of sound (the decibels) to which they must be adjusted. The ordinance therefore has all the vices of the ones which we struck down in Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 [60 S.Ct. 900, 84 L.Ed. 1213, 128 A.L.R. 1352]; Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U.S. 444 [58 S.Ct. 666, 82 L.Ed. 949]; and Hague v. C.I.O., 307 U.S. 496 [59 S.Ct. 954, 83 L.Ed. 1423].” The court also said: “Loud-speakers are today indispensable instruments of effective public speech. The sound truck has become an accepted method of political campaigning. It is the way people are reached. . . .
“The present ordinance would be a dangerous weapon if it were allowed to get a hold on our public life. Noise can be regulated by regulating decibels. The hours and place of public discussion can be controlled. But to allow the police to bar the use of loud-speakers because their use can be abused is like barring radio receivers because they too make a noise. The police need not be given the power to deny a man the use of his radio in order to protect a neighbor against sleepless nights. The same is true here.
“Any abuses which loud-speakers create can be controlled by narrowly drawn statutes. When a city allows an official to ban them in his uncontrolled discretion, it sanctions a device for suppression of free communication of ideas. In this case a permit is denied because some persons were said to have found the sound annoying. In the next one a permit may be denied because some people find the ideas annoying. Annoyance at ideas can be cloaked in annoyance at sound. The power of censorship inherent in this type of ordinance reveals its vice.”
This is the only clear-cut expression by the Supreme Court of the United States. It is admitted in the majority opinion in the present case, and by all legal writers and commentators (62 Harv.L.Rev. 1228; 47 Mich.L.Rev. 1007; 97 U.Pa. L.Rev. 730; 34 Cornell L.Q. 626; 34 Iowa L.Rev. 681; 14 Mo. L.Rev. 194; 22 So.Cal.L.Rev. 416) that the later ease of Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U.S. 77 [69 S.Ct. 448, 93 L.Ed. 513, 10 A.L.R.2d 608], while casting some doubt on the holding in *75the Saia case, because of the many opinions, has caused “hopeless confusion” in the field of regulation of sound trucks. There is no majority decision in the Kovacs case which holds, as the majority in effect does here, that sound trucks may be absolutely prohibited since three of the Justices (Reed, Burton and Vinson) upheld the ordinance on the ground that the state courts had interpreted it not as an absolute ban, but only as barring sound trucks that emitted “loud and raucous noises.” The Saia case expressly points out that “[a]ny abuses which loud-speakers create can be controlled by narrowly drawn statutes. ’ ’ Also, as pointed out in the Saia case, an ordinance could be drawn relating to such sound trucks by regulating the volume of sound, the hours and places of use in the interests of the public peace and tranquillity without imposing either a prior, or absolute, restraint on the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. As was pointed out in an article in 22 So. California Law Review 416, 420, the crucial problem is one of differentiating between the right of local government legitimately to exercise proper police regulations which will encroach on constitutional rights, and the right of a group of individuals to be secure in their exercise of a constitutionally given freedom. A balance has been struck in other fields where individual freedoms must be somewhat circumscribed in the interest of the public good. No good reason appears why the same thing may not be accomplished in this field without the necessity of absolute prohibition.
The ordinance involved in the Kovacs case related to the use of sound trucks on the public streets, alleys or thoroughfares within the city of Trenton, New Jersey. The area prohibited in the ordinance here involved is not so circumscribed. In State v. Headley, (Fla.) 48 So.2d 80, an ordinance of the City of Miami prohibited the operation on city streets of vehicles to which mechanical loud-speakers had been attached. It was held there that the right of a citizen to use the public streets was not absolute and unconditional but might be controlled and regulated in the interest of the public good. The appellant in the Headley case was arrested for using a loud-speaker attached to his vehicle while on a busy downtown street which was highly congested with traffic. In Brinkman v. City of Gainesville, 83 Ga.App. 508 [64 S.E.2d 344], an ordinance prohibited the operation of a loudspeaker upon the streets of the city of Gainesville. The ordi*76nance was held constitutional as not violative of the freedoms of speech and religion. The ordinance involved in the case at bar makes unlawful the emission or transmission of “. . . any loud or raucous noise upon or from any public highway or public thoroughfare or from any aircraft of any kind whatsoever.”
It may be agreed that Mr. Justice Reed was correct when he said (Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U.S. 77, 81, 82 [69 S.Ct. 448, 93 L.Ed. 513, 10 A.L.R.2d 608]) that “ [u]nrestrained use throughout a municipality of all sound amplifying devices would be intolerable.” He added that “ [a]bsolute prohibition within municipal limits of all sound amplification, even though reasonably regulated in place, time and volume, is undesirable and probably unconstitutional as an unreasonable interference with normal activities.” (Emphasis added.)
I would affirm the judgment to the extent that it enjoins enforcement of clause (3) of subdivision (d) of section 2. of Ordinance No. 415 on the ground that it is unconstitutional on its face as an abridgment of freedom of speech guaranteed to the individual by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. I express no opinion concerning the constitutionality of the balance of the ordinance in question.
Traynor, J., concurred.
Respondent’s petition for a rehearing was denied March 3, 1955. Gibson, C. J., Carter, J., and Traynor, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.