Court Opinion

ID: 9485968
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:34:45.246202+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:27.998636
License: Public Domain

FLAUM, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join the court’s opinion as to its application of 18 U.S.C. § 844(h)(1) and concur in *1258the judgment as to its application of 42 U.S.C. § 3631. I write separately in order to express some additional thoughts about these statutes which were used to convict Hayward and Krause.
To begin with, I agree with the majority that under the prevailing rules of statutory construction, we are obliged to take 18 U.S.C. § 844(h)(1) at its word to enhance the punishment of any individual who “uses fire or an explosive to commit any felony which may be prosecuted in a court of the United States.” I am dubious about whether Congress intended cross burnings to fall under section 844(h)(1), which — the legislative history strongly indicates — was amended to include the word “fire” for the purpose of facilitating the prosecution of arson-related offenses. See United States v. Lee, 935 F.2d 952, 958 (8th Cir.), vacated on other grounds, reh’g en banc granted in part (Aug. 14, 1991); cf. John Panneton, Federalizing Fires: The Evolving Federal Response to Arson Related Crimes, 23 Am.Crim.L.Rev. 151 (1985) (describing the efforts of “creative prosecutors” to adapt federal statutes, including 18 U.S.C. § 844, to cover greater numbers of arson-related crimes). Nevertheless, since the plain meaning of the statute encompasses offenses of this type, I believe that its application to the facts of this case was not improper.
I also agree that it was proper to apply 42 U.S.C. § 3631 to the defendants’ actions, but I would approach the question of that statute’s constitutionality differently than the majority. In my view, determining how to apply the Supreme Court’s recent decision in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, — U.S. -, 112 S.Ct. 2538, 120 L.Ed.2d 305 (1992), a sharply divided 5-4 ruling, is a difficult matter. I conclude that although section 3631 and the ordinance under review.in R.A.V. bear a superficial similarity, their internal structures differ in a crucial respect that requires us to uphold this law.
Section 3631, as the majority states, is part of the “Prevention of Intimidation” subchap-ter of the Fair Housing Act. The subsection applicable to this case punishes by misdemeanor any individual who “by force or threat of force willfully injures, intimidates or interferes with — ... any person because he is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person ... from — participating, without discrimination on account of race, color, religion, sex, handicap ..., familial status ..., or national origin”.in the occupation of any dwelling. 42 U.S.C. § 3631(b). While section 3631(b) bans the use of pure force as a means of intimidation, this case involves the other activity that it proscribes: the making of threats.
A threat is made when the threatener informs the recipient of his threat that he is contemplating the infliction of some harm upon another, often the recipient himself. Either words or symbols may be the medium of a threat; as anyone familiar with our nation’s history is aware, a burning cross is no less effective at communicating the intended message than are written or spoken words. Although threats have undeniable expressive content (indeed, speech qualifies as a threat by virtue of the message it expresses), the First Amendment poses no special obstacle to their prohibition. Threats interfere with the rights of individuals to be free from the fear of violence; they are disruptive and costly to society; and they usually contribute little or nothing to the marketplace of ideas. See Rogers v. United States, 422 U.S. 35, 46-47, 95 S.Ct. 2091, 2098, 45 L.Ed.2d 1 (1975) (Marshall, J., concurring); United States v. Velasquez, 772 F.2d 1348, 1356-58 (7th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1021, 106 S.Ct. 1211, 89 L.Ed.2d 323 (1986). For that reason, one influential commentator has argued that the making of threats, like the use of speech to commit perjury or extortion, fix prices, place bets with bookies, and so on, falls entirely outside the coverage of the First Amendment’s protection. See Frederick Schauer, Categories and the First Amendment: A Play in Three Acts, 34 Vand.L.Rev. 265, 267-82 (1981), cited in R.A.V., — U.S. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 2563 (Stevens, J., concurring in the result).
Congress has passed numerous laws that proscribe threats. See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 871 (threats against the president and successors to the presidency); id. § 876 (threats by mail to injure or kidnap); id. § 1513 (retaliatory *1259threats against informants and witnesses); id. § 115 (threats to assault, kidnap, or murder federal officials). These statutes have been consistently upheld as constitutional, despite the fact that they criminalize utterances because of their expressive content. See Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705, 707-08, 89 S.Ct. 1399, 1400-01, 22 L.Ed.2d 664 (1969) (per curiam) (holding that the First Amendment does not protect “true threats” against the President); United States v. Varani, 435 F.2d 758, 762 (6th Cir.1970) (“[S]peech is not protected when it is the very vehicle of the crime itself. E.g., ... 18 U.S.C. §§ 871-877 (1964) ... (Extortion and Threats).”); see also Boos v. Barry, 485 U.S. 312, 326, 108 S.Ct. 1157, 1166, 99 L.Ed.2d 333 (1988) (commenting favorably on a law that prohibits activity undertaken to “intimidate, coerce, threaten, or harass”).
To say that threats are proscribable, however, does not end the matter as to the constitutionality of section 3631. The controversial holding of R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul was that while an entire category of speech may be proscribable (obscenity or fighting words, for example), it may be impermissible to proscribe only a subset of that category if the subset is drawn along content-based lines. In R.A.V., for example, the Court held that although it may be permissible to proscribe all fighting words, it is impermissible to proscribe only those fighting words that “arouse anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender,” as did St. Paul’s Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance, as construed by the Minnesota Supreme Court. The Court revised its long-standing view of fighting words, stating that they are not truly “categories of speech entirely'invisible to the Constitution” as some earlier cases had held, and therefore they “may [not] be made the vehicles for content discrimination unrelated to their distinctively proscribable content.” R.A.V., — U.S. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 2543. In the Court’s view, singling out for proscription speech that is “addressed to ... specified disfavored topics,” even if those topics., are communicated by means of fighting words, is an impermissible effort at censorship by the government. See id. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 2547.
R.A.V. identified several limited exceptions to this overarching precept of content-neutrality. First, the Court explained, content-based distinctions may be drawn within a class of proscribable speech if the basis for the distinction is “the very reason the entire class is proscribable.” The Court offered the following example, helpful for analysis of the present ease.
The federal government can criminalize only those threats of violence that are directed against the President, see 18 U.S.C. § 871 — since the reasons why threats of violence are outside the First Amendment (protecting individuals from the fear of violence, from the disruption that fear engenders, and from the possibility that violence will occur) have special force.when applied to the person of the President. Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705, 707, 89 S.Ct. 1399, 1401, 22 L.Ed.2d 664 (1969).... But the Federal Government may not criminalize only those threats against the President that mention his policy on aid to inner cities.
Id. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 2546. Second, a content-defined subclass’may be treated differently if the subclass is associated with “particular ‘secondary effects’ ” of the speech, so that “the regulation is ‘justified without reference to the content of the speech.’ ” Id. (quoting Renton v. Playtime Theaters, Inc., 475 U.S. 41, 48, 106 S.Ct. 925, 929, 89 L.Ed.2d 29 (1986) (quoting, with emphasis, Virginia Pharmacy Bd. v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748, 771, 96 S.Ct. 1817, 1830, 48 L.Ed.2d 346 (1976))). The Court included under this exception laws directed at conduct that “incidentally” sweep up a content-based subcategory of a proscribable class of speech.1 Fi*1260nally, the Court offered a “catch-all” exception that other bases for distinction may be valid, even if non-neutral, so long ás “there is no realistic possibility that official suppression of ideas is afoot.” Id. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 2547.
Under the R.A.V. analysis, section 3631 seems functionally similar to St. Paul’s Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance. Like the ordinance, section 3631 selects a subclass of threats from the larger proscribable class of all threats apparently on the basis of the message conveyed — because they express hostility to the idea that blacks and whites should share housing together. It may be possible,-however, to uphold section 3631 under the first of R.AV.’s three limited exceptions. The reason threats are proscribable in ' the first place is the fear that they arouse in listeners; that fear, which one might frame as a “psychological injury,” may be offered as a reason for regulating this subclass of threats .that is unrelated to the suppression of speech. In their concurrences, several Justices argued that the St. Paul ordinance should be judged constitutional on precisely this reasoning. Borrowing the majority’s example, Justice Stevens argued:
Just as Congress may determine that threats against the President entail more severe consequences than other threats, so St. Paul’s City Council may determine that threats based on the target’s race, religion, or gender cause more severe harm to both the target and to society than other threats. This latter judgment — that harms caused by racial, religious, and gender-based invective are qualitatively different from that caused by other fighting words — seems eminently reasonable and realistic.
Id. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 2565 (Stevens, J., concurring in the judgment); see also id. at —, 112 S.Ct. at 2556 (White, J., concurring in the judgment) (“This selective regulation reflects the City’s judgment that harms based on race, color, creed, religion, or gender are more pressing public concerns than the harms caused by other fighting words. In light of our Nation’s long and painful experience with discrimination, this determination is plainly reasonable.”); id. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 2560-61 (Blackmun, J., concurring in the judgment).2
The same arguments could be raised in relation to section 3631. However, the R.A.V. majority specifically rejected the claim that the subclass of fighting words regulated by St. Paul — words that incite on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender — could be singled out because of some special injury they eause. The Court maintained that it was “word-play” to say that the ordinance targeted particular harms caused by the speech, rather than the content of the speech itself. “What makes the anger, fear, sense of dishonor, etc. produced by violation of this ordinance distinct from the anger, fear, sense of dishonor, etc. produced by other fighting words is nothing other than the fact that it is caused by a distinctive idea, conveyed by a distinctive message. The First Amendment cannot- be evaded that easily.” R.A.V., — U.S. at —, 112 S.Ct. at 2548. If the R.A.V. majority rejected the idea that fighting words— words that “by their very utterance inflict injury,” Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 572, 62 S.Ct. 766, 769, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942)—could be subcategorized along these lines in light- of the greater harm caused by racist or sexist fighting words, then it would be unlikely-to uphold a similar classification among threats — words that create a fear of violence — on the theory that *1261threats targeted against individuals who share housing with members of minority groups cause greater fear or more severe disruption.
Since the crucial question is whether the statute regulates speech because of its content or message, however, there is an important dissimilarity in the structure of these two laws. The critical language in the St. Paul statute, unaffected by the Minnesota Supreme Court’s gloss, is that speech is proscribed that insults or provokes violence “on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender.” Banning speech. because of the type of reaction it would engender in the listener, the majority reasoned, necessarily requires an examination of the content of that speech. The ordinance thus attempted to control which messages could be communicated via fighting words. The “on the basis of’ language by itself compels an examination of content.
Section 3631, on the other’ hand, forbids threats directed at an individual “because he is ... or» order to intimidate such person from” participating in the exercise of housing rights without discrimination. Section 3631 focuses neither on the content of the threat nor on the effect that it is likely to cause in the listener, but rather on the choice of victim or on the motive of the person making the threat. Indeed, the precise message of the threat does not determine whether section 3631 has been violated. There is no need to consider whether the victim is threatened with a violent act or some undefined harm (e.g., “Do what we want or else”); whether the threat is unconditional or is promised to occur “unless” the victim takes some action; or whether some particular idea (e.g., that blacks and whites should not live together) is expressed thereby. It may turn out, of course, that the wording of a written threat helps to determine whether the threat was made because the victim was participa!-• ing in the protected activities, but the purpose of the statute is not to ban communication of that message.
Although this distinction may seem illusory, it dovetails with a distinction drawn by the R.A.V. majority itself.
What we have here, it must be emphasized, is not a prohibition of fighting words that are directed at certain persons or groups (which would be facially valid if it met the requirements of the Equal Protection Clause); but rather, a prohibition of fighting words that contain (as the Minnesota Supreme Court repeatedly emphasized) messages of “bias-motivated” hatred and in particular, as applied to this case, messages “based on virulent notions of racial supremacy.” [In re Welfare of R.A.V.,] 464 N.W.2d [507], 508, 511 [ (Minn.1991) ].
R.A.V., — U.S. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 2548 (emphasis in original). This passage indicates that a legislature may select a group to protect specially from the harm of fighting words (or, by extension, threats), and pass legislation that prohibits individuals from using those forms of speech against them. An equivalent way to write such a law would be to focus on the perpetrator, rather than the speech itself, and to consider whether he chose his victims because they belong to the protected group.3
Justice Stevens argued that the majority had drawn a distinction without a difference, since the reason why a legislature would selectively proscribe speech aimed at certain persons or groups (“for example, a law proscribing threats against the elderly”) would be its determination that the harm caused by the regulated expression differed from that caused by other unregulated expression (“the elderly are more severely injured by threats than are the nonelderly”) — a justification that the majority had declared invalid because it was based on the message behind the words. See id. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 2565 (Stevens, J., concurring in the judgment). There are other reasons to doubt whether it *1262would be possible to prohibit speech that is “directed at certain persons or groups” without resorting to content discrimination. Fighting words or threats directed at certain persons or groups may be conceptualized in two ways. A threat worded “I plan to kill you” and mailed to an elderly person would fall under a prohibition on threats against the elderly (to borrow Justice Stevens’ example) without any recourse to the content of the threat itself. On the other hand, a poster nailed onto someone’s front door that contained a threatening diatribe against elderly people living in the community would violate the law only in light of its content, the idea it was trying to express. The point, of course, is that the choice of persons or groups targeted by a threat, whether stated explicitly in the threat or merely implied from the surrounding circumstances, is an essential component of the message that the threat means to communicate.
One may similarly question whether there is any constitutional difference between a prohibition on threats directed against those who entertain members of minority groups in their homes and a prohibition on threats that cause fear “on the basis of’ someone’s exercise of housing rights without discrimination. The constitutionality of a law ought not depend, it would seem, on which of two functionally equivalent ways it is written. In any case, I conclude that section 3631 draws permissible lines within the class of proscribable threats. While I hope that the court’s ruling in this case does not bear out Justice White’s fear that R.A.V. “will surely confuse the lower courts,” id. at -, 112 S.Ct. at 2560 (White, J., concurring in the judgment), I believe that the result it reaches is sound under that decision and under traditional First Amendment principles.

. I disagree with the majority's view that section 3631 falls under this exception. R.A.V. gives as examples a law against treason, which would be violated by telling the enemy the nation’s defense secrets, and Title VII’s prohibition of sexual discrimination in employment practices, which might be violated by speaking sexually derogatory fighting words. Both of these are general laws that incidentally burden speech, therefore meriting treatment under the more permissive test of United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 20 L.Ed.2d 672 (1968). Section *12603631, on the other hand, regulates threats directly, not merely as an instance of some broader practice such as "treason” or "discrimination.” Cf. Jews for Jesus, Inc. v. Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Inc., 968 F.2d 286 (2d Cir.1992) (applying R.A.V. to uphold state and federal antidiscrimination laws that were violated by defendants’ efforts, some via speech, to make a resort facility breach its contract with the plaintiff organization).

. In a penetrating analysis of the R.A.V. decision, Professor Akhil Amar argues that all of the opinions, majority and concurring, would have been enriched by consideration of how the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments bear on the St. Paul ordinance. One might underscore the point in connection with the passages from the concurrences cited above. See Akhil Reed Amar, The Supreme Court, 1991 Term—Comment: The Case of the Missing Amendments: R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 106 Harv.L.Rev. 124 (1992).

. This past Term, in Wisconsin v. Mitchell, - U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 2194, 124 L.Ed.2d 436 (1993), the Supreme Court upheld a Wisconsin statute that enhances the penalty for an offense if the offender intentionally selected his victim "because of the race, religion, color, disability, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry” of that person. The Court rebuffed the argument that the statute punishes bigoted thought. It did note, however, that the Wisconsin law aims at conduct — namely, violence — that, unlike speech, receives no First Amendment protection.