Court Opinion

ID: 9601731
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:49:32.80782+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:47:22.165840
License: Public Domain

LUCERO, J.,
dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc.
Because the panel’s opinion will leave our circuit unnecessarily entangled in future review of time, place, and manner restrictions, and because in my judgment the panel’s opinion incorrectly decides the question of the nature of the forum involved in cases of this type, I respectfully dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc. Conceptually, it is important to distinguish between transitory and permanent speech. As I see it, not unlike most public parks in America in which permanent monuments have been placed, the cases before us involve limited public fora. In limited public fora, local governments may make content-based determinations about what monuments to allow in such space, but may not discriminate as to viewpoint.
*1172As an initial matter, I agree with the panel that these monuments do not constitute government speech. Under the Wells framework, the government must have exercised some control over the form and content of the speech before the fact, not merely accepted it after the fact. Wells v. City & County of Denver, 257 F.3d 1132, 1141-43 (10th Cir.2001) (holding sign was government speech where the city had “complete control over the sign’s construction, message, and placement”; the city “built, paid for, and erected the sign”; and corporate sponsors did not “exercise[ ] any editorial control over its design or content.”). In these cases, the private parties conceived the message and design of the monuments without any government input, thus the speech must be considered private. See Summum v. City of Ogden, 297 F.3d 995, 1004-06 (10th Cir.2002) (holding monument was not government speech where Fraternal Order of Eagles “designed, produced, and donated the Ten Commandments Monument”; central purpose of monument was “to promote the views and agenda of the Eagles rather than the City of Ogden”; “Eagles exercised complete control over the content of the Monument, turning over to the City of Ogden a completed product”; and city only claimed to adopt views of monument “post hoc”). It follows that these cases necessarily implicate government regulation of private speech.1
Whether government regulation of private speech violates the First Amendment depends on context. Courts engage in forum analysis to determine whether the speaker acts in a traditional public forum, a designated public forum, or a nonpublic forum, and it is in this analysis that I differ with the panel. In identifying the type of forum involved, we first consider the government property at issue and the type of access sought. Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Def & Educ. Fund, Inc., 473 U.S. 788, 800, 105 S.Ct. 3439, 87 L.Ed.2d 567 (1985); City of Ogden, 297 F.3d at 1001. Only after the type of forum is identified do we ask whether it is public or nonpublic in nature. Because the government property involved in these cases consists of the city parks, and the access sought is the installation of permanent monuments, the panel correctly concludes that the relevant forum consists of permanent monuments in the city parks. See Summum v. Pleasant Grove City, 483 F.3d 1044, 1050 (10th Cir.2007); Summum v. Duchesne City, 482 F.3d 1263, 1269 n. 1 (10th Cir.2007). In the next step of the forum analysis, however, the panel asserts that the relevant forum is the entire park, regardless of the type of access sought. Pleasant Grove, 483 F.3d at 1050; Duchesne, 482 F.3d at 1269. The panel’s claim that access “is relevant in defining the forum, but ... does not determine the nature of that forum,” id. at 1269 n. 1, confuses the forum analysis. Only by defining the forum with reference to the access sought can a court determine the nature of that forum. See Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 801, 105 S.Ct. 3439. In Perry Education Ass’n v. Perry Local Educators’ Ass’n, a case which the panel cites, the Supreme Court first narrowed the forum to the mail delivery system within a school, and only then did it consider the nature of this forum; it did not simply conclude that schools in general are public fora. 460 U.S. 37, 49, 103 S.Ct. 948, 74 L.Ed.2d 794 (1983). Perry also held that a court may make conceptual distinctions in defining the forum, even if there are no physical barriers. See Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 801, 105 S.Ct. 3439 (“Perry ... examined the access sought by the speaker and *1173defined the forum as a school’s internal mail system and the teachers’ mailboxes, notwithstanding that an ‘internal mail system’ lacks a physical situs.”) (citation omitted). As in Perry and Cornelius, Sum-mum seeks access to a particular means of communication, but the nature of the forum necessarily hinges both on the method of communication and on the location.
The panel gives great weight to the conception that city parks are “quintessential public forums,” see Perry, 460 U.S. at 45, 103 S.Ct. 948, but in my view, permanent displays do not fall within the set of uses for which parks have traditionally been held open to the public. In Perry, the Court noted that parks are “places which by long tradition or by government fiat have been devoted to assembly and debate,” and “which have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public, and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions.” Id. (quotation omitted) (emphasis added). As Perry indicates, our modern concept of the park as a public forum derives from a well-established common law right to assemble and speak one’s mind in the commons. This right, however, does not extend to the type of displays at issue here, and one would be hard pressed to find a “long tradition” of allowing people to permanently occupy public space with any manner of monuments. In short, a park is a traditional public forum when access is sought to it for temporary speech and assembly, such as protests or concerts, but it hardly follows that parks have been held open since time immemorial for the installation of statues of Balto the Husky or the sword-wielding King Jagiello, to note two of the more popular attractions in New York City’s Central Park.
I recognize that there is some disagreement among our sister circuits on this point, but courts consistently have given special consideration to the issue of displays installed on public land. In Graff v. City of Chicago, 9 F.3d 1309, 1314 (7th Cir.1993), the Seventh Circuit held that “[t]here is no private constitutional right to erect a structure on public property. If there were, our traditional public forums, such as our public parks, would be cluttered with all manner of structures.” (quotation and citation omitted). The Second Circuit in Kaplan v. City of Burlington, 891 F.2d 1024, 1029 (2d Cir.1989), determined that the city “had not created a forum in City Hall Park open to the unattended, solitary display of religious symbols.” By stating that the City of Burlington must affirmatively open the public park for this kind of use, the Second Circuit recognized that such physical occupation of park space does not fall within the scope of the traditional public forum, but rather the government must assent to such access before a forum is created. By contrast, the Ninth Circuit has held that “[n]o affirmative government action is required to open a traditional public forum to a specific type of expressive activity.” Kreisner v. City of San Diego, 1 F.3d 775, 785 (9th Cir.1993). Kreisner acknowledged, however, that the government might close the park with respect to large unattended displays, but held that the plaintiff had failed to meet his burden of proof on this point. Id. This is to say, that even the Kreisner court has recognized that it is not a foregone conclusion that parks are traditional public fora for all uses, particularly for the installation of permanent displays.
In my view a park is not a traditional public forum insofar as the placement of monuments is concerned, but that still leaves the question of whether it is a designated public forum or a nonpublic forum. Although there is a disagreement among our sister circuits regarding the categori*1174zation of limited public fora, this circuit and recent Supreme Court opinions have treated limited public fora as a species of nonpublic fora. See Good News Club v. Milford Cent. Sch., 533 U.S. 98, 106-107, 121 S.Ct. 2093, 150 L.Ed.2d 151 (2001) (in a limited public forum, the state may restrict speech but many not discriminate on the basis of viewpoint (citing Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819, 829, 115 S.Ct. 2510, 132 L.Ed.2d 700 (1995); Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 806, 105 S.Ct. 3439)); City of Ogden, 297 F.3d at 1002 n. 4 (“A ‘limited public forum’ is a subset of the nonpublie forum classification.”); Callaghan, 130 F.3d at 914 (“In more recent cases ... the Court has used the term ‘limited public forum’ to describe a type of nonpublic forum”); see also Child Evangelism Fellowship of Md., Inc. v. Montgomery County Pub. Schs., 457 F.3d 376, 382 n. 3 (4th Cir.2006) (surveying conflicting views among the circuits). In the present cases, the city governments have not allowed the kind of “general access” or “indiscriminate use” of park property that is a hallmark of a designated public forum. Summum v. Callaghan, 130 F.3d 906, 915 n. 13 (10th Cir.1997) (citing Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 803, 105 S.Ct. 3439; Perry, 460 U.S. at 47, 103 S.Ct. 948). Instead, they have “create[d] a channel for a specific or limited type of expression where one did not previously exist,” Child Evangelism Fellowship, 457 F.3d at 382, and have thus established limited public fora. As discussed supra, the right to install permanent monuments did not previously exist in these parks, and in these cases the cities have allowed only “selective access to some speakers or some types of speech in a nonpublic forum.” Callaghan, 130 F.3d at 916. Here, the cities have permitted a few monuments to be erected for specific purposes — in the case of Pleasant Grove, to memorialize the city’s history, and in the case of Duchesne, to honor service groups. Having created limited public fora, the cities may make reasonable content-based, but viewpoint-neutral, decisions as to who may install monuments in the parks.2 Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 806, 105 S.Ct. 3439.
There are some indications that the cities engaged in impermissible viewpoint discrimination by denying Summum access to the limited public fora, and the need for further briefing and argument on this point is one reason why en banc proceedings are necessary. More importantly, however, the panel has given an unnatural reading to the traditional public forum doctrine, and binds the hands of local governments as they shape the permanent character of their public spaces. Although these governments may enact time, place, and manner restrictions that will give them some control over monuments in their parks, they now must proceed on the basis of the panel’s faulty legal reasoning. More troubling is that such restrictions will undoubtedly be challenged in court and reviewed under a strict scrutiny standard. The panel decision forces cities to choose between banning monuments entirely, or engaging in costly litigation where the constitutional deck is stacked against them. Because I believe the panel’s legal conclusions are incorrect, and that its decisions will impose unreasonable burdens on local governments in this circuit, I would grant rehearing en banc.

. Although the monument involves a religious message, these cases properly consider the question of free speech, not establishment of religion.

. By contrast, when the government itself speaks, it may discriminate as to both content and viewpoint. Rosenberger, 515 U.S. at 833, 115 S.Ct. 2510.