Court Opinion

ID: 9525356
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:02:32.789094+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:14:24.259103
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
I am in agreement with the thoughtful and thorough opinion of Judge Young of the Fourth District. 4447 Corporation v. Goldsmith (1985), Ind.App., 479 N.E.2d 578. I will surface portions of that opinion in order to re-emphasize the important points.
The majority summarizes with approval appellees’ contention that ... “the purpose of the CRRA remedies is not to suppress speech but rather to compel the forfeiture of assets acquired through racketeering activity” and that ... “the seizure orders were not entered because appellants’ assets were obscene materials but because there was probable cause to believe they were assets subject to forteiture.”
The majority intimates that the challenged legislative scheme here is a legitimate and rational response to the problem *568of racketeering activity and that the potential impact of the forfeiture on presumptively constitutionally protected expressive materials is irrelevant. Therefore, the majority holds, under this relaxed standard of review, that the challenged legislative scheme passes constitutional muster.
The majority opinion misses the mark. Supreme Court decisions clearly direct, however, that in cases of this order, “the standard of review is determined by the nature of the right assertedly threatened or violated rather than by the power being exercised or the specific limitation imposed.” Schad v. Borough of Mount Ephraim (1981), 452 U.S. 61, 68, 101 S.Ct. 2176, 2182, 68 L.Ed. 671. [Emphasis added].
4447 Corporation v. Goldsmith, supra at 583.
Here, the nature of the right assertedly threatened is appellants’ First Amendment Right to sell books: books which until adjudged obscene, an unprotected category of speech, are constitutionally protected.
“Given the assertion of this right, we are not free to accept uncritically the state’s characterization of the padlocking of bookstores and the seizure of their contents as neutral incidents of a campaign against “racketeering”, but rather must subject the state regulation to searching and realistic scrutiny.” [Emphasis added]
4447 Corporation v. Goldsmith, supra at 584.
Under the circumstances of these cases, a searching and realistic scrutinization reveals that the challenged legislative scheme operates as an unconstitutional pri- or restraint of speech. As employed by both prosecutors, once a person is found to have engaged more than once in an open retail sale of unprotected speech, he forfeits his rights in protected speech. Such a perfunctory scheme resulting in an entire shutdown is clearly an unconstitutional pri- or restraint on future protected conduct.