New Mexico state fair. Source: Beate Sass, https://beatesass.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/the-new-mexico-state-fair/.

Green chile is undoubtedly a popular product at the New Mexico State Fair.  But can another “green” product—medicinal marijuana—be displayed at the state fair?  That question now rests with a federal district court.

New Mexico allows vendors of food, medical, and other products to display their products in booths at the annual state fair.  New Mexico Top Organics—Ultra Health, Inc., a medical cannabis company, sought to display its medical cannabis products at the fair, but New Mexico has a policy disallowing the display of drugs or drug paraphernalia at the fair.  In 2016 and 2017, the state prohibited Ultra Health from displaying its products, or images of its products, at the fair.  Ultra Health determined that, without images or examples of its products, it could not meaningfully participate in the fair, and it subsequently brought suit against several state fair officials, alleging violations of its free speech rights under the First Amendment. Continue Reading Land of Enchantment? Court Says Display of Marijuana is First Amendment-Protected, But Time Will Tell Whether State Fair Can Prohibit It

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri recently sided with a St. Louis-area locality of 1,500 best known as the home of the events behind The Exorcist, upholding its sign code against a motion for preliminary injunction.  The principle facts were these: the City of Bel-Nor code allows one double-faced stake-mounted yard sign per improved parcel.  Plaintiff Lawrence Willson placed three such signs in his yard, a window sign near his front door asking first responders to rescue his pets, and an “Irish for a Day” flag in his garden.  Bel-Nor cited him for violating the one-sign-per-yard ordinance, but did not take issue with the window sign or garden flag, although they too likely violated its sign code.

Lawrence, represented by the ACLU, sought a preliminary injunction to enjoin Bel-Nor from enforcing its entire sign code ordinance, arguing that the ordinance violated his Constitutional right to Free Speech.  The district court rejected the request with a rote application of First Amendment principles. Continue Reading Tiny Enclave’s One-Sign Rule Survives Initial Constitutional Challenge

Silvie Pomicter protesting outside Mohegan Sun Arena. Source: The Times Leader.

We previously reported on this case, wherein a group of animal rights activists sought to protest the Barnum and Bailey Circus outside of Mohegan Sun Arena in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.  In 2016, the district court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania granted a preliminary injunction against the convention center’s protest policy, which required protesters to gather in two areas of approximately 500 to 700 square feet in the arena’s parking lot.  The facts of the case are reported in our earlier blog post. Continue Reading Animal Rights Activists Win Another Round in Circus Case

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York recently declared unconstitutional New York City’s ban on advertising in vehicles other than exempted taxis.  Under the city’s program, medallion and certain other taxis could display advertising, including seat-back television content and advertising, but other for-hire vehicles (“FHVs”), like those used for Lyft and Uber rideshare services could not do the same. Vugo, Inc., a seat-back video advertising company, challenged New York City’s regulations on ground that distinction between taxis and other FHVs violated the First Amendment.  On the parties’ cross motions for summary judgment, the district court agreed.

The court reviewed the regulations under Central Hudson’s four-part commercial speech test.  Under that test, if the speech regulated is neither false nor unlawful (a component not at issue in this case) and the government can show a substantial interest to justify its regulation, the court then considers whether regulation directly advances the government’s interest and whether it is narrowly drawn and not more extensive than necessary to serve the interest.

On the second prong, the court agreed with New York City that its interest in regulating vehicle advertisements as annoyances to passengers was substantial—but beyond that point the city’s arguments fared worse.  Most problematic for the court was the city’s justification for allowing advertising in taxis but not other FHVs: that the advertisements allowed operators to offset the cost of expensive ride- and fare-monitoring equipment the city required taxis to maintain.  That justification for the distinction shared no relationship to the city’s concerns about passenger annoyances, however.  That is, the advertisements were equally annoying irrespective of whether they helped offset other costs.  And because the taxi exemption still allowed advertising for more than 370,000 daily trips, the court doubted that the distinction between taxis and FHVs advanced the city’s other stated interest in aesthetics.

The court also found the exemption lacking with respect to Central Hudson’s fourth prong.  Though it noted that the commercial speech test does not require cities to employ the least restrictive means to achieve their goals, it concluded New York City’s outright prohibition on advertising in FHV was far too broad.

The court’s suggested alternative: just let passengers turn the ads off.

View the complete decision here: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2015cv08253/448867/63/

The City of Oakland, California, evidently hoping that new multifamily residential and commercial developments will contribute to public art displayed around the city, last year enacted an ordinance requiring art purchases as a condition of development approval.  For new multifamily developments, the city requires art purchases (or an in lieu payment to the city’s public art fund) equivalent to .5 percent of a proposed building’s development costs.  New commercial developments incur purchase requirements or fee payments equal to 1 percent of those costs.  And for developers choosing to purchase art, the city requires that they display it on the property where the development will occur.

The Building Industry Association-Bay Area (“BIA”) challenged the ordinance’s validity, arguing Continue Reading U.S. District Court Dismisses Claims that Oakland Art-Purchase Development Condition Violates Constitution

James Deferio protesting same-sex marriage in Syracuse. Source: Syracuse University Student Voice.

In a case that we reported on in 2016, a federal district court in New York has granted summary judgment to the plaintiff.  The case involves the regulation of protest speech—specifically, a protester’s activities during an LGBTQ rights parade—on public sidewalks.

A brief recap of the facts is merited.  James Deferio is a Christian evangelist who has protested each year at the Central New York Pride Parade and Festival, held in Syracuse.  Each year, the city issued a permit to the organizers of the parade.  That permit indicated that no speakers would be allowed on sidewalks adjacent to the parade.  At the 2014 event, Syracuse police officers threatened Deferio with arrest in reliance on the permit, and he relocated from the site.  In 2015, the city again approved a permit for the parade, giving the parade exclusive control over First Amendment activities and limiting the use of sound amplification devices near the parade route.  The 2015 permit also allowed for a zone where protest activities could occur.  Deferio again attended the parade to protest.  After minor verbal altercations ensued, a Syracuse police officer told Deferio that he could be arrested for his activities, and he relocated to the zone designated for protest activity. Continue Reading Summary Judgment Granted to Christian Evangelist in Syracuse Pride Parade Case

Photo credit: slgckgc, flickr. Used pursuant to license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.

Don Karns and Robert Parker are evangelical Christian ministers.  The New Jersey Transit Corporation is a government entity providing mass transit services throughout the Garden State.  All three arrived together in court (the first time) after the preachers began proclaiming their creed on a Princeton-area train platform, leading first to passenger complaints and, soon afterward, to their arrest for obstruction of justice and defiant trespass.  Because NJ Transit employed the officers involved, Karns and Parker brought a Section 1983 action alleging that both the officers and the agency had violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments by selectively enforcing NJ Transit’s platform-speech-permitting policy, retaliating against their exercise of First Amendment rights, and restricting their ability to record the encounter.

The district court dismissed those claims, and the Third Circuit affirmed.  The bulk of the opinion concerned an issue interesting in its own right but tangential to the focus of this blog—whether the NJ Transit, in its official capacity, enjoyed 11th Amendment immunity.  After concluding that the 11th Amendment did shield NJ Transit as an arm of the state, the remainder of the opinion dispatched with the preachers’ individual-capacity 1983 claims against the officers themselves.  As to the selective enforcement argument, the ministers had presented no evidence to show that the officers had or would have treated any other platform-goers differently, so the claim failed as a factual matter.  On the First Amendment retaliation claim, Karns and Parker could not overcome the officers’ assertion of qualified immunity because no clearly established law demonstrated that an arrest supported by probable cause could constitute actionable retaliation.  The preachers’ third theory met a similar end: unable to find any clearly established law barring the officers from restricting video recording of police interactions, the court concluded that qualified immunity protected them from the preachers’ claims.

Complete opinion available here: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca3/16-2171/16-2171-2018-01-11.html

Last month, a federal district court in Pennsylvania found that a billboard company’s challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s highway advertising law sufficiently stated a claim for relief and could proceed to further stages of litigation.

Pennsylvania’s highway advertising law contains a general prohibition on sign structures within 500 feet of a highway interchange or rest area, but the law exempts on-premises commercial and noncommercial signs (i.e. those advertising activities and products available on the property where the sign is located) and “official signs,” which are defined as those placed by public agencies.

Adams Outdoor Advertising, a billboard company, brought a First Amendment challenge, claiming that PennDOT, the state’s transportation department, had changed its interpretation of the highway advertising law, and had given varying directives regarding whether the 500-foot restriction applied to billboards on the opposite side of a highway from a rest area or interchange. Adams wanted to install a billboard opposite an interchange, but PennDOT had declined to issue a permit.  Adams contended that PennDOT’s changed interpretation of the statute made it unconstitutionally vague.  Adams further alleged that the lack of any timeframes in which PennDOT was required to act upon applications for sign permits also made the law unconstitutional.

The court first determined that it was not clear whether the law in question was content neutral, due in part to the exceptions to the permitting requirement.  The court left for a later day the determination of whether it was content neutral, reasoning that even a content neutral law would be required to satisfy intermediate scrutiny.  The court dismissed Adams’s vagueness claim, however, because it found that a person of ordinary intelligence could determine the meaning of the law from its face; the court was not persuaded that PennDOT’s changing interpretation of the statute rendered the law vague.  The court went on to find, however, that because the law was not clearly content neutral on its face, the lack of any timeframe for the issuance of sign permits would potentially create a constitutional defect in the statute.

The court additionally dismissed substantive due process and equal protection claims as well.

Adams Outdoor Advertising Limited Partnership v. Penn. Dept. of Transp., No. 5:17-cv-01253, 2018 WL 822450 (E.D. Penn. Feb. 9, 2018).

A Street Preacher (though not the one in this case) | by frankieleon, flickr. Used subject to reuse label.

The concrete pathways at the corner of University Boulevard and Hackberry Lane in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, may look and quack like

sidewalks, but as constitutional matter, the Eleventh Circuit considers them something less: an extension of the University of Alabama campus.  In a recent decision, that circuit concluded the sidewalks were not a “traditional public forum” within which the Constitution confines government control of speech and other demonstrations, but rather a “limited public forum” to which the University of Alabama could constitutionally control access. The practical result?  The unlicensed street preacher who sued ‘Bama won’t get a preliminary injunction against the university’s grounds-use policy.

The plaintiff preacher, Continue Reading Can University of Alabama control preacher’s access to campus sidewalks? 11th Circuit: Roll Tide.

[The following case centered on an ethnic slur and this post therefore includes two references to that slur.]

Reaffirming the First Amendment’s virtual prohibition on viewpoint discrimination, the Second Circuit recently held that New York state could not prohibit a vendor from participating in public lunch program simply because its name and menu featured ethnic slurs.

The case emerged from a dispute over access to the publicly owned Empire State Plaza in Albany, New York.  After years of contracting with a single vendor to supply food for a daily lunch program hosted in the plaza, New York’s Office of General Services (OGS) chose instead to feature a rotating line-up of food trucks—similar to Civic Center Eats program in Denver’s Civic Center Park—subject to a permitting regime.  Plaintiff Wandering Dago, Inc. (“WD”), which operates a food truck with the same name, applied to OGS for a vending permit.  Though the application proceeded normally at first, when OGS officials realized the term Continue Reading Offensive Name Not a Constitutional Reason to Ban Food Truck from Public Lunch Programs, Says Second Circuit