Court Opinion

ID: 9467628
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:52:43.060706+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:26.355554
License: Public Domain

RUSSELL E. SMITH, District Judge,
dissenting:
An airport is constructed for the purpose of facilitating the movement of people and their luggage to and from airplanes. The people who use airports are of necessity funnelled through narrow portals. They must travel in relatively fixed channels from the exit gate to the luggage carrousel; from the ticket counter to the security check; from the security check to the departure gate. These people are in a sense captives. They do not have the freedom to choose alternate routes, as do users of the city streets, nor the freedom to deviate from the route, once chosen, to avoid annoyance or disturbance. I think it is the duty of an airport board to make travel as convenient as possible for these captives.
However valuable the right to speak and proselytize in public places may be, some exercise of free speech can cause disturbances. Thus, a reaction could be expected to a Ku Klux Klan demonstration in the airport at Atlanta, Georgia, or to an anti-Irish demonstration on St. Patrick’s Day in the airport at Butte, Montana. In the confines of an airport a demonstration by a sufficient number of people could cause an annoying congestion.
Certainly an airport manager, with advance notice of the nature of an anticipated demonstration and the number of people intending to demonstrate, could, by the employment and deployment of security forces, provide more effective protection for the demonstrators and the public than would be possible if no one was aware of the demonstration until it was taking place. Likewise, congestion could be minimized by the selection of passenger routes and by1 limitations upon the numbers of demonstrations permitted at given points at given times.
The ordinance here does not empower the airport authorities to censor or forbid any speech, and it abridges first amendment rights only in that it delays for one day (four at the very most) the exercise of the right to speak and it requires that those who would exercise first amendment rights make the effort to give the notice. I do not believe that the effect of the espousal of any idea is so rapid that a one-day, or even four-day, delay would have any serious effect upon a particular cause sought to be advanced or upon the general right to speak freely. I regard the extra effort required to give notice in much the same vein. If that extra effort is so onerous in the mind of the one who would speak that such extra effort would deter speech, then that same mind has placed a minimal value on the worth of the speech and the cause which the speech would espouse.
In any case of this sort the court must balance the restrictions on first amendment rights against the governmental purpose to be served. The majority strikes the balance in one way. I would strike it in another. In my opinion, the affidavit of the airport manager sufficiently discloses the public interest to be served, and the case is distinguishable from Kuszynski v. City of Oakland, 479 F.2d 1130 (9th Cir. 1973). See Wolin v. Port of New York Authority, 392 F.2d 83 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 393 U.S. 940, 89 S.Ct. 290, 21 L.Ed.2d 275 (1968).
If the advance notice requirement is valid, then I believe that the identification provision is likewise valid. The affidavit of the airport manager indicates a need to *1253communicate with those who plan a demonstration to avoid problems before they occur. The affidavit likewise indicates that the ordinance has worked well in practice. Certainly it would be of value to the airport and to those who would speak if there were communication as to matters such as an emergency created by counterdemonstrations or confrontations. I believe that there is a purpose to be served by the identification requirement and that the case is not governed by Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60, 80 S.Ct. 536, 4 L.Ed.2d 559 (1960).