Court Opinion

ID: 9793994
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:56:25.776079+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:09:35.549023
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON PETITION FOR REHEARING
Although the City of Anchorage did not file a responsive brief or otherwise participate in the appeal of this case, we have granted the City permission to file a petition for rehearing pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 35. In its petition the City argues that the recent United States Supreme Court opinion in Colten v. Kentucky, 407 U.S. 104, 92 S.Ct. 1953, 32 L.Ed.2d 584 (1972), demonstrates that we were mistaken in our conclusion that the entire Anchorage “disorderly conduct” ordinance was overbroad and vague. We disagree.
Colten had been convicted of violating a Kentucky disorderly conduct statute which provided in relevant part:
(1) A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if, with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he:
(f) Congregates with other persons in a public place and refuses to comply with a lawful order of the police to disperse ....
*654The prefatory language of the Kentucky statute is quite similar to that of the Anchorage ordinance.1 Colten can only be distinguishable from Marks by noting that the latter case is an action for declaratory judgment in which no limiting construction of the ordinance was requested or considered. However, Colten is a perplexing opinion, out of the mainstream of United States Supreme Court precedents, most of which were not cited by the Court, and its effects on the vagueness and overbreadth doctrines must be considered extremely uncertain.
In support of its conclusion that the Kentucky statute, as applied, was not unconstitutionally vague, the court relied entirely on the lack-of-notice rationale, noting simply that the “root of the vagueness doctrine is a rough idea of fairness”, and that Colten should have understood that he could be convicted under the statute after he disobeyed a police order to move on.2 92 S.Ct. 1953. The Court made no mention of the possibility of uneven enforcement which, just four months earlier in Papa-christou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156, 92 S.Ct. S39, 31 L.Ed.2d 110, 115 (1972), had been explicity recognized by the Court, in a unanimous opinion, as the alternate rationale for the vagueness doctrine. The failure to mention the arbitrary enforcement rationale is particularly striking in light of Colten’s allegation that he was arrested under the statute because of his long hair and beard and because he had just participated in a demonstration. Colten v. Commonwealth, 467 S.W.2d at 379. Surely a statute which makes it a criminal act to gather in a public place and refuse to obey a police order to move on, raises at least the possibility of arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.3
The Court did not refer to its year-old holding in Coates v. Cincinnati, 402 U.S. 611, 91 S.Ct. 1686, 29 L.Ed.2d 214 (1971), where a Cincinnati, Ohio, ordinance which made it a crime for “three or more persons to assemble ... on any of the sidewalks . . . and there conduct themselves in a manner annoying to persons passing by . . . . ” (emphasis added) was declared invalid on its face for vagueness and overbreadth. The Court stated:
In our opinion this ordinance is unconstitutionally vague because it subjects the exercise of the right of assembly to an unascertainable standard, .... Conduct that annoys some people does not annoy others. Thus, the ordinance is vague, not in the sense that it requires a person to conform his conduct to an imprecise but comprehensible normative standard, but rather in the sense that no standard of conduct is specified at all. As a result, “men of common intelli*655gence must necessarily guess at its meaning.” (citation omitted).
Id. at 614, 91 S.Ct. at 1688, 29 L.Ed.2d at 217. Both the Kentucky statute considered in Colten and the Cincinnati ordinance stuck in Coates purported to restrict public assembly. If Cincinnati cannot constitutionally restrict assembly that is “annoying” to passers-by, how can Kentucky be allowed to outlaw assembly that causes “public annoyance”?
Considered against the backdrop of previous Supreme Court precedents, the Court’s treatment of the overbreadth issues in Colten is vague. The Court held that the Kentucky statute, limited as follows by the Kentucky Court of Appeals, was not overbroad:
' As reasonably construed, the statute does not prohibit the lawful exercise of any constitutional right. We think that the plain meaning of the statute, in requiring that the proscribed conduct be done “with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof,” is that the specified intent must be the predominant intent. Predominance can be determined either (1) from the fact that no bona fide intent to exercise a constitutional right appears to have existed or (2) from the fact that the interest to be advanced by the particular exercise of a constitutional right is insignificant in comparison with the inconvenience, annoyance or alarm caused by the exercise.
467 S.W.2d at 377. The only overbreadth case mentioned by the Court is Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 536, 85 S.Ct. 453, 13 L.Ed.2d 471 (1965). It is questionable, however, whether the latter part of the Kentucky court’s construction can be squared with the following language from Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 4, 69 S.Ct. 894, 93 L.Ed. 1131, 1134 (1949), repeated by the Court in Edwards v. South Carolina, 372 U.S. 229, 237, 83 S.Ct. 680, 684, 9 L.Ed.2d 697, 703 (1963):
[F]reedom of speech [though not absolute] ... is [nevertheless] protected against censorship or punishment, unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest. . . . (emphasis added).
Although Terminiello and Edwards signify that mere public inconvenience or annoyance are insufficient evils to justify limiting first amendment freedoms, Colten does not distinguish either.4 The Court did not refer to the following highly relevant language from Coates:
Our decisions establish that mere public intolerance or animosity cannot be the basis for abridgement of these constitutional freedoms, [citations omitted] The First and Fourteenth Amendments do not permit a State to make criminal the exercise of the right of assembly simply because its exercise may be “annoying” to some people. . . . And such a prohibition, in addition, contains an obvious invitation to discriminatory enforcement against those whose association together is “annoying” because their ideas, their lifestyle, or their physical appearance is resented by the majority of their fellow citizens, (footnotes omitted)
The reference to the opinion of the Kentucky Court of Appeals provides little additional aid in interpreting the Supreme Court opinion. That opinion contains a number of statements which require ex*656planation. For example, citing an obscenity case, the court argued:
If the lack of redeeming social value is a basis upon which the right of freedom of speech may be required to yield to the protection of contemporary standards of morality ... it would seem that the public’s interest in being protected from inconvenience, annoyance or alarm should prevail over any claimed right to utter speech that has no social value.
467 S.W.2d at 377. This is an obvious non sequitur. For while the court has declared that obscene speech is not protected, no decision has held that non-obscene speech without social value is not entitled to constitutional protection. The reason, presumably, is that government officials cannot make principled distinctions as to what speech lacks “social value” any more than they can decide what speech is “offensive.” 5 The Kentucky court’s treatment of the vagueness issue is also noteworthy:
It is true that the statute does not attain idealistic perfection in preciseness, but it is fully as precise as some of the language of the Bill of Rights. We do conceive that the defining of prohibited conduct must be more precise than the defining of a right of conduct. To illustrate: If “peaceably” is a sufficiently precise word in the First Amendment’s guarantee of the right of assembly, should “nonpeaceably” be considered too vague in a statute describing the kind of assemble [sic] that is prohibited ?
467 S.W.2d at 378. The answer to the court’s rhetorical question must be “yes” if the word fails to give citizens notice of what is prohibited or licenses arbitrary enforcement ; clearly zones of prohibited conduct must be defined with greater clarity than are constitutional rights.
In sum, Colten seems difficult to reconcile in letter and spirit with a long line of Supreme Court cases, which were not referred to by the Court in the opinion.6 As noted above, however, the Court -emphasized that it was reviewing the Kentucky statute as construed by the state court and as applied to the specific facts of Colten’s case.7 Notwithstanding any discomfiture we may have about the Supreme Court’s opinion, Marks, a declaratory judgment action, is clearly distinguishable. For example, regarding the alleged vagueness of the Kentucky statute, the Court stated:
Any person who stands in a group of persons along a highway where the po*657lice are investigating a traffic violation and seeks to engage the attention of an officer issuing a summons should understand that he would be convicted under subdivision (f) of Kentucky’s statute if he fails to obey an order to move on.
92 S.Ct. at 1957. In Marks, on the other hand, the Anchorage ordinance was attacked on its face and the question was whether, under a fair reading of the ordinance, it was susceptible to unconstitutional applications, not whether a particular application was infirm. Regarding the overbreadth issue, Colten was appealed after the Kentucky Court of Appeals had placed a judicial gloss on the statute which the Court asserted prevented any overbroad unconstitutional application :
As the Kentucky statute was construed by the state court, however, a crime is committed only where there is no bona fide intention to exercise a constitutional right — in which event, by definition, the statute infringes no protected speech or conduct — or where the interest so clearly outweighs the collective interest sought to be asserted that the latter must be deemed insubstantial.
92 S.Ct. at 1957. In Marks, since the City made no appearance, no such limiting construction of the Anchorage ordinance was requested or considered.
This leads to a final consideration: Since the City offered this court no assistance either in the form of legal authority or in a suggested judicial gloss that would have enabled this court to interpret the ordinance in such a way that constitutional pitfalls would be avoided, the City is in a particularly weak position to urge rehearing. That position is further undermined by the fact that the authority now cited by the City is distinguishable.
The petition for rehearing is therefore denied.
BONEY, C. J., and BOOCHEVER, J., did not participate in decision on rehearing.

. Colten was driving in a procession of automobiles that had formed after a demonstration at the Lexington Airport. The lead vehicle was stopped by the police and the driver issued a citation because the automobile had expired plates. Colten attempted to converse with the officers about his friend’s citation and was arrested after he allegedly refused to obey a police request to leave. 92 S.Ct. 1953.

. Nor did the court mention Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham, 382 U.S. 87, 86 S.Ct. 211, 15 L.Ed.2d 176 (1965), where the Court reversed a conviction under a Birmingham, Alabama ordinance which provided that it was unlawful “for any person to stand or loiter upon any street or sidewalk of the city after having been requested by any police officer to move on.” Because the Birmingham ordinance and the Kentucky statute are similar in effect, the Shuttlesworth holding seems inconsistent with the Court’s opinion in Colten. In Shuttlesworth, the Court stated:
Literally read, therefore, the second part of this ordinance says that a person may stand on a public sidewalk in Birmingham only at the whim of any police officer of that city. The constitutional vice of so broad a provision needs no demonstration. It “does not provide for government by clearly defined laws, but rather for government by the moment-to-moment opinions of a policeman on his beat.” (citation omitted)
Id. at 90, 86 S.Ct. at 213, 15 L.Ed.2d at 179.

. The Kentucky court, after quoting from Edwards, did make an effort to deal with the inconsistent language:
[W]e do not believe that the evil must be one that rises far above inconvenience, annoyance or alarm where the particular exercise of the right of speech falls far below the level of minimum social value. We think it is a matter of balancing of interests and that where the interest which the individual seeks to advance through exercise of freedom of speech is minuscule in comparison with the public’s interest in being protected from the consequences of that exercise, the public’s interest should prevail even though the harm the public might be exposed to is no more than inconvenience or annoyance.
467 S.W.2d at 377.

. See Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 91 S.Ct. 1780, 25, 29 L.Ed.2d 284, 294 (1971).

. Among the more conspicuous omissions were five decisions handed down in the last two years: Papachristou v. Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156, 92 S.Ct. 839, 31 L.Ed. 2d 110 (1972) ; Gooding v. Wilson, 1405 U.S. 518, 92 S.Ct. 1103, 31 L.Ed.2d 408 (1972) ; Coates v. Cincinnati, 402 U.S. 611, 91 S.Ct. 1686 29 L.Ed.2d 214 (1971) ; Palmer v. Euclid, 402 U.S. 544, 91 S.Ct. 1563, 29 L.Ed.2d 98 (1971) ; Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 91 S.Ct. 1780, 29 L.Ed.2d 284 (1971).

. This factor does not, by itself, adequately distinguish Colten from prior Supreme Court precedents. As the court noted succintly in Coates v. Cincinnati:
The ordinance before us makes a crime out of what under the Constitution cannot be a crime. It is aimed directly at activity protected by the Constitution. Wg need not lament that we do not have before us the details of the conduct found to be annoying. It is the ordinance on its face that sets the standard of conduct and warns against transgression. The details of the offense could no more serve to validate this ordinance than could the details of an offense charged under an ordinance suspending unconditionally the right of assembly and free speech. (emphasis added).
402 U.S. 611, 616, 91 S.Ct. 1686, 1689, 29 L.Ed.2d 214, 218-219 (1971). In other words, to protect first amendment freedoms, the Court has allowed “vicarious” assaults on invalid statutes; a defendant need not show that his conduct was itself entitled to protection as a prerequisite to successfully attack an over-broad or vague statute. See generally Note, The First Amendment Overbreadth Doctrine, 83 Harv.L.Rev. 844 (1970).