Court Opinion

ID: 9576315
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:23:09.01906+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:05:28.219772
License: Public Domain

STEINMETZ, J.
(dissenting). I dissent to the majority opinion. When compared to constitutional principles, I believe the majority has overreached in interpreting the statute as did the legislature in adopting it.
I do not comment extensively on the behavior of the defendants while on the premises of Affiliated Medical Services. However, I do believe the behavior complained *543against could have been charged criminally under sec. 947.01, Stats., disorderly conduct, which tends to confirm that the state need not punish these defendants under sec. 943.145 in order to keep the peace. Texas v. Johnson, 1989 U.S. LEXIS 3115, 22 (filed June 21, 1989). In City of Oak Creek v. King, 148 Wis. 2d 532, 545, 436 N.W.2d 285 (1989), this court stated:
It is not necessary that an actual disturbance must have resulted from the appellant's conduct. The law only requires that the conduct be of a type which tends to cause or provoke a disturbance, under the circumstances as they then existed.
If the defendants' conduct constituted "substantial intrusions which offend the normal sensibilities of average persons" or "significantly abusive or disturbing demeanor in the eyes of reasonable persons," then they are chargeable under sec. 947.01, Stats. State v. Givens, 28 Wis. 2d 109, 122, 135 N.W.2d 780 (1965). It must be emphasized that in both King and Givens the defendants' conduct triggered their arrest and eventual conviction. In King, the defendant entered a restricted area after an airplane crash and refused to leave when advised to do so by the police. King, 148 Wis. 2d at 537-38. In Givens the defendants "conducted a sit-in demonstration on the floor of the waiting room and of the corridor leading to the office of the Milwaukee county board of supervisors . . .." Givens, 28 Wis. 2d at 111-12.
Section 943.145, Stats., makes a person chargeable with a violation not for any behavior or actions of the defendant but for mere entry of the person on a premise, public or private, if the circumstances provoke a breach of the peace. In other words, if a person's entry, expression or even appearance upsets someone who then causes a disturbance, the gravamen or fault rests with the per*544son exercising the constitutional right of freedom of expression and right to move about unfettered in public facilities. Mere entry or expression is a criminal violation. This broad restriction applies not only to these defendants but to anyone who espouses a philosophy contrary to the persons on the premises and is upset by that individual's expression or appearance.
Section 943.145, Stats., treats as criminal behavior the mere entry of a public or private "medical facility" that causes a response or reaction by someone else that breaches the peace. As recently stated by the United States Supreme Court: "[i]t would be odd indeed to conclude . . . that the Government may ban the expression of certain disagreeable ideas on the unsupported presumption that their very disagreeableness will provoke violence." Johnson, 1989 U.S. LEXIS at 20.
Jacobs v. Major, 139 Wis. 2d 492, 524, 407 N.W.2d 832 (1987) dealt with a privately-owned facility. As the dissent in Jacobs noted, additional rights are guaranteed in public places. Id. at 532 (Abrahamson, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). This statute overbroadly applies to both public and private medical facilities.
I believe sec. 943.145, Stats., is constitutionally defective in that it impermissibly invades a person's right to free speech. First, "medical facility" is defined in sec. 50.33(2) which includes public and private medical facilities. Hospitals as well as clinics are the beneficiaries of this criminal statute, with no distinction between public and private facilities. Thus, the entry into either a public or private medical facility, state owned or privately owned, is prohibited if such entry is "without the consent of some person lawfully on the premises" and this alone could trigger the offense. Consent, by the wording of the statute, can be given by anyone lawfully on the premises. That could include any doctor, *545employee, patient or member of the public lawfully there and, therefore, lacks certainty. Such entry into a public facility should not be prohibited even if done for purposes of expressing a thought or by mere presence.
Section 943.14, Stats., is the only other criminal statute which makes mere entry a violation if it tends to create or provoke a breach of the peace. However, sec. 943.14 concerns the entry into a dwelling not entry into a public facility. Consent is always necessary when entering a dwelling; this requirement is not needed when entering a public facility.
I believe that a law aimed at and which threatens one group's constitutional right to free speech threatens the rights of all Americans. I find sec. 943.145, Stats., too broad and in violation of constitutional rights and therefore dissent from the majority opinion.