Case Study:
The Chicago Park District operates the Chicago public parks and is responsible for group use. It adopted an ordinance requiring park users to get permits before any public assembly, parade, picnic, or other event involving more than 50 people, or events using amplified sound. The applications are processed in order of receipt, and the Park District decides whether to grant or deny most applications within 14 days. Applications can be denied on any of 13 specified grounds. A denial requires written explanation and, when feasible, suggestions as to how to prepare a successful application. If a denial is given, one can appeal to the Park Superintendent, who has seven days to respond. If the Park Superintendent denies the appeal, the applicant may seek judicial review in state court. Petitioners have applied to the Park District on several occasions for permits to hold rallies advocating the legalization of marijuana. The Park District granted some permits and denied others. Unsatisfied, the petitioners filed suit in U.S. District Court, alleging that the ordinance is unconstitutional. The district court granted summary judgment for the Park District, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed. Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court. II The First Amendment’s guarantee of the freedom of speech, or of the press, prohibits a wide assortment of government restraints upon expression, but the core abuse against which it was directed was the scheme of licensing laws implemented by the monarch and Parliament to contain the evils of the printing press in 16th- and 17thcentury England. The Printing Act of 1662 had prescribed what could be printed, who could print, and who could sell. It punished the publication of any book or pamphlet without a license and required that all works be submitted for approval to a government official, who wielded broad authority to suppress works that he found to be heretical, seditious, schismatical, or offensive. The English licensing system expired at the end of the 17th century, but the memory of its abuses was still vivid enough in colonial times that Blackstone warned against the restrictive power of such a licenser—an administrative official who enjoyed unconfined authority to pass judgment on the content of speech. In Freedman v. Maryland (1965), we confronted a state law that enacted a strikingly similar system of prior restraint for motion pictures. It required that every motion picture film be submitted to a Board of Censors before the film was shown anywhere in the State. The Board enjoyed authority to reject films that it considered obscene or that tend[ed], in the judgment of the Board, to debase or corrupt morals or incite to crimes, characteristics defined by the statute in broad terms. The statute punished the exhibition of a film not submitted to the Board for advance approval, even where the film would have received a license had it been properly submitted. It was no defense that the content of the film was protected by the First Amendment. We recognized in Freedman that a scheme conditioning expression on a licensing body’s prior approval of content presents peculiar dangers to constitutionally protected speech. [T]he censor’s business is to censor, and a licensing body likely will overestimate the dangers of controversial speech when determining, without regard to the film’s actual effect on an audience, whether speech is likely to incite or to corrupt [the] morals. In response to these grave dangers of a censorship system, we held that a film licensing process must contain certain procedural safeguards in order to avoid constituting an invalid prior restraint: (1) any restraint prior to judicial review can be imposed only for a specified brief period during which the status quo must be maintained; (2) expeditious judicial review of that decision must be available; and (3) the censor must bear the burden of going to court to suppress the speech and must bear the burden of proof once in court. [T]he licensing scheme at issue here is not subjectmatter censorship but content-neutral time, place, and manner regulation of the use of a public forum. The Park District’s ordinance does not authorize a licensor to pass judgment on the content of speech: None of the grounds for denying a permit has anything to do with what a speaker might say. The picnicker and soccerplayer, no less than the political activist or parade marshal, must apply for a permit if the 50-person limit is to be exceeded. As the Court of Appeals well put it: [T]o allow unregulated access to all comers could easily reduce rather than enlarge the park’s utility as a forum for speech. We have never required that a content-neutral permit scheme regulating speech in a public forum adhere to the procedural requirements set forth in Freedman. [T]he [permit] required is not the kind of prepublication license deemed a denial of liberty since the time of John Milton but a ministerial, police routine for adjusting the rights of citizens so that the opportunity for effective freedom of speech may be preserved. Regulations of the use of a public forum that ensure the safety and convenience of the people are not inconsistent with civil liberties but [are] one of the means of safeguarding the good order upon which [civil liberties] ultimately depend. Such a traditional exercise of authority does not raise the censorship concerns that prompted us to impose the extraordinary procedural safeguards on the film licensing process in Freedman. III Of course even content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions can be applied in such a manner as to stifle free expression. Where the licensing official enjoys unduly broad discretion in determining whether to grant or deny a permit, there is a risk that he will favor or disfavor speech based on its content. We have thus required that a time, place, and manner regulation contain adequate standards to guide the official’s decision and render it subject to effective judicial review. Petitioners contend that the Park District’s ordinance fails this test. We think not. As we have described, the Park District may deny a permit only for one or more of the reasons set forth in the ordinance. It may deny, for example, when the application is incomplete or contains a material falsehood or misrepresentation; when the applicant has damaged Park District property on prior occasions and has not paid for the damage; when a permit has been granted to an earlier applicant for the same time and place; when the intended use would present an unreasonable danger to the health or safety of park users or Park District employees; or when the applicant has violated the terms of a prior permit. Moreover, the Park District must process applications within 28 days, and must clearly explain its reasons for any denial. These grounds are reasonably specific and objective, and do not leave the decision to the whim of the administrator. They provide narrowly drawn, reasonable, and definite standards to guide the licensor’s determination. And they are enforceable on review first by appeal to the General Superintendent of the Park District and then by writ of common-law certiorari* in the Illinois courts. For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
Q1. What was the importance of the court’s determination that the Chicago Park District’s procedures were content neutral?
Q2. Why is the court applying a federal constitution test to a state governmental entity?
Q3. Are the petitioners attempting to argue that actions by the Park District are a prior restraint? If so, did they succeed? Do you believe it is a prior restraint? What requirements are necessary for a prior restraint to be held valid?
Your answer must be typed, double-spaced, Times New Roman font (size 12), one-inch margins on all sides, APA format and also include references.