Summary
A complete ban on protest activity that effectively silenced dissent in a public forum would be a presumptively unconstitutional prior restraint on speech and, accordingly, is rarely encountered in actual practice.18 Much more commonly presented are government efforts to regulate protest activity through a permitting or licensing process whereby officials are put on notice of the planned activity and then seek to impose an alternative date or time or a different location or route than that requested by the organizers of the protest.19 Time, Place, and Manner Restrictions Where government restrictions are not based on censorship of the viewpoint of the protestors, courts employ the First Amendment doctrine of time, place, and manner to balance the right to protest against competing governmental interests served by the enforcement of content-neutral restrictions.20 In differentiating between contentbased and content-neutral restrictions on the right to public protest, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that [t]he principal inquiry in determining content neutrality, in speech cases generally and in time place or manner cases in particular is whether the government has adopted a regulation of speech because of disagreement with the message it conveys.
See the full content of this document
Extract
Time, Place, and Manner
These words, published in 1835 by Alexis de Tocqueville in the book American Democracy, were intended as an observation on the importance of the right of assembly to a citizen's ability to directly influence the political process.1 However, the ability to "carry their desires into execution" has a potentially ominous connotation in a post-September 1 1 environment where a concern for security and public safety is paramount. If, for example, the desire to be carried into execution is to "affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction," then it qualifies as an act of terrorism tiiat law enforcement is charged witii preventing.2 An event, activity, or meeting having political, ideological, or social significance might hold an equal attraction to a peaceful protestor as it would to a potential terrorist or anarchist. Thus, the dilemma, long faced by law enforcement but now exacerbated by the omnipresent threat of terrorism, is how to effectively exercise control over such events, which often involve large gatherings of people, in the interest of preserving public order and safety without trammeling the First Amendment rights of protesters. This article examines how courts have recently reconciled security-based restrictions with the right to protest.
The Right of Public ProtestFreedom of speech and the right of the people peaceably to assemble are specifically guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.3 Protest activity falls squarely within the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and assembly.4 The right to protest is most highly protected when assembly for purposes of expression takes place on property that, by law or tradition, has been giv...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
