Court Opinion

ID: 9471603
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:36:41.073008+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:29.453264
License: Public Domain

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
concurring, with whom ROSS, JOHN R. GIBSON, FAGG, and BOWMAN, Circuit Judges, join.
For the reasons so ably stated by the Court, I agree that the plain view-severance approach is proper, that the shotgun was validly seized, and that the conviction should be affirmed. I do not join Part III. of the lead opinion, however, because in my view the pistol and the rifle were also validly discovered and seized. A belt buckle could have been found in an overcoat pocket, or behind a dresser drawer. It was therefore wholly proper for the officers executing the warrant to be looking in those places.
I also wish to emphasize that the Court en banc is not holding that the Hell’s Angels have a First Amendment right of association, or that any clause in this warrant was not particular enough in its description of the articles to be seized. Those conclusions were reached by the panel, but they were not referred to the Court en banc for its review. The right-of-association question especially gives me pause. Presumably no one would argue that there is a First Amendment right to ride a motorcycle. Whether the First Amendment nonetheless guarantees the right of two or more people to ride motorcycles in groups, is a question much more doubtful than the panel opinion implies. No one contends that the Hell’s Angels petition Congress for redress of grievances, or advocate ideas or doctrines, so far as I know. Whatever right of association they have, then, probably is an aspect of that “liberty” which the Due Process Clause seems to protect against arbitrary or irrational governmental action, rather than a right entitled to the more expansive protection of the First Amendment, which forbids reasonable as well as unreasonable attempts by Congress to abridge the freedom of speech. “It may be ... that association for ends specifically mentioned in the First Amendment will prevail against all state interests not regarded as ‘compelling,’ while other kinds of association . .. would be protected not by the specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights, but by the more nebulous concept of substantive due process, an oxymoron if there ever was one.” United States Jaycees v. McClure, 709 F.2d 1560, 1568 (8th Cir.1983) (footnote omitted).
The panel opinion holds that the Hell’s Angels is an association protected by the *640First Amendment. Since the Court en banc, as I read its opinion, does not reach that question, but simply takes the panel’s conclusion as a given for purposes of analysis, it is not necessary for me to pursue the issue.