Case Brief 22 - R.A.V v. St. Paul PDF

Preview

Summary

It's a reading notes for the cases that we had to turn in every class...

Description

POL 226, Dr. Harriger – Janice Park R.A.V v. St. Paul 505 U.S 377 (1992) Facts: Legally Relevant Facts : R.A.V and his friends burned a cross on a black family’s lawn, and were charged under the BiasMotivated Crime Ordinance, “which prohibits the display of a symbol one knows or has reason to know arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender.” Procedurally Relevant Facts : The City of St. Paul, Minnesota charged them with Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance

Issue(s): “Whether the ordinance was, on its face, unconstitutional because it attempted to silence speech on the basis of its content.” Holding: “The judgement of the Minnesota Supreme Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.” The ordinance is facially unconstitutional. Reasoning: Although it is true that there are several areas where freedom of speech does not apply, they are not the “categories of speech entirely invisible to the Constitution, so that they may be made the vehicles for content discrimination unrelated to their distinctively proscribable content.” Although “those who wish to use ‘fighting words’ in connection with other ideas – to express hostility, for example, on the basis of political affiliation, union membership, or homosexuality – are not covered, the First Amendment does not permit St. Paul to impose special prohibitions on those speakers who express views on disfavored subjects.” Also, “the reason why fighting words are categorically excluded from the protection of the First Amendment is not that their content communicates any particular idea, but that their content embodies a particularly intolerable mode of expressing whatever idea the speaker wishes to convey.” However, the ordinance makes “fighting words of whatever manner that communicate messages of racial, gender, or religious intolerance,” which can create the possibility of handicapping the expression of particular ideas,” which is prohibited by First Amendment. Therefore, the ordinance is unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Concurring Arguments: Justice White : “the St. Paul ordinance is fatally overbroad because it criminalizes not only unprotected expression but expression protected by the First Amendment.” “the Court has disregarded two established principles of First Amendment law without providing a coherent replacement theory.”

POL 226, Dr. Harriger – Janice Park “The decision is mischievous at best and will surely confuse the lower courts.” Justice Blackmun : “The majority opinion signals one of two possibilities: it will serve as precedent for future cases, or it will not. Either result is disheartening.” He furthers his argument by explaining both scenarios

Justice Stevens : “I disagree with both the Court’s and part of Justice White’s analysis of the constitutionality St. Paul ordinance … I do not believe that all content-based regulations are equally infirm and presumptively invalid; unlike Justice White, I do not believe that fighting words are wholly unprotected by the First Amendment … I believe our decisions establish a more complex and subtle analysis, one that considers the content and context of the regulated speech, and the nature and scope of the restriction on speech.”...