Constitutional Law Prof Blog

Court Hears Arguments in Austin Sign Case

Steven D. Schwinn, University of Illinois Chicago School of Law

The Supreme Court will hear arguments this morning in a case testing Austin's sign code, which allows digitization of on-premises signs, but not of off-premises signs. Here's my preview, from the ABA Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases, with permission:

Issue

Does Austin’s city code, which distinguishes between on-premises signs (which may be digitized) and off-premises signs (which may not), constitute an impermissible content-based regulation of speech, in violation of the First Amendment?

Case at a Glance

The Austin Sign Code allows sign owners to digitize their on-premises signs (those that are located at the same site as the business or activity to which they relate). But it forbids owners from digitizing their off-premises signs (those that are not located at the same site as the business or activity to which they relate). Applying those regulations, the City denied permission to two corporations to digitize their off-premises signs.

INTRODUCTION

Government speech regulations that are based on the content of the speech are subject to strict scrutiny, and are presumptively invalid, under the First Amendment. But it’s not always clear when a government regulation is content based. The Court sought to clarify this in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 576 U.S. 155 (2015). In Reed, the Court held that a government speech regulation is based on content if the plain text of the regulation discriminates by the content of speech, or if the government cannot justify the regulation without reference to the content. Applying the first part of test, the Fifth Circuit held that Austin’s sign regulations were content based, because a person would have to read the sign (and its content) in order to determine whether the sign was on premises or off premises.

ISSUE

Is Austin’s distinction between on-premises signs and off-premises signs facially unconstitutional under Reed?

FACTS

The City of Austin regulates signs within its jurisdiction based on their location. Under City regulations, the owner of an “on-premises” sign—a sign that advertises a business or activity that is located on the site where the sign is located—can digitize the sign. But the owner of an “off-premises” sign—a sign that “advertises a business, person, activity, good, products, or services not located on the site where the sign is installed”—cannot. Austin says that these rules protect the aesthetic value of the City and protect public safety.

In April and June 2017, Reagan National Advertising of Austin and Lamar Advantage Outdoor Company filed separate applications to digitize their off-premises billboards. The City denied the applications, citing its sign policy.

Reagan sued the City in state court. Reagan argued that Austin’s sign policy amounted to content-based discrimination of speech, and that it was facially unconstitutional. Austin removed the case to federal court, based on the federal constitutional question.

Then, in August 2017, Austin amended its Sign Code. The amended Code defines an “off-premise sign” as “as sign that displays any message directing attention to a business, product, institution, or other commercial message which is generally conducted, sold, manufactured, produced, offered, or occurs elsewhere than on the premises where the sign is located.” The regulations define an “on-premise sign” as “a sign that is not an off-premise sign.”

The amended Code also includes a new provision, dealing with non-commercial signs. It reads:

(A) Signs containing noncommercial speech are permitted anywhere that signs regulated by this chapter are permitted, subject to the same regulations applicable to the type of sign used to display the noncommercial message. No provision of this chapter prohibits an ideological, political, or other noncommercial message on a sign otherwise allowed and lawfully displayed under this chapter.

(B) The owner of any sign allowed and lawfully displayed under this chapter may substitute noncommercial speech in lieu of any other commercial or noncommercial speech, with no permit or other approval required from the City solely for the substitution of copy.

(C) This section does not authorize the substitution of an off-premise commercial message in place of a noncommercial or on-premise commercial message.

In October 2017, Lamar joined Reagan’s suit as a plaintiff. The district court ruled for the City, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed. This appeal followed.

CASE ANALYSIS

The Court has long held that government regulations of speech that discriminate based on the content of the speech are subject to strict scrutiny and presumptively invalid. But determining whether a speech regulation discriminates based on content turns out to be much harder than it would seem. For decades, lower courts struggled with this.

In particular, in order to assess the question, lower courts before 2015 applied two different, and sometimes inconsistent, tests to determine whether a law restricted speech based on its content. One test looked to the plain text of a law or regulation and asked whether it discriminated on its face, based on the content or subject-matter of the speech. The other test looked to the purpose of the law or regulation and asked whether the government could justify its restriction “without reference to the content of [the] speech.” Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703 (2000).

Then, in 2015, the Court sought to clarify the confusion. The Court in Reed v. Town of Gilbert 135 S. Ct. 2218 (2015), adopted a two-part test to determine when a speech regulation is based on content. First, courts must read the text of the regulation to determine whether it distinguishes between speech based on its content, or message. Under Reed, a speech regulation that discriminates based on content on its face is automatically subject to strict scrutiny and presumptively invalid. This holds even if the regulation is based on a content-neutral purpose.

Next, if the facial text of the regulation is content-neutral, courts must examine the purpose of the regulation. If the regulation “cannot be ‘justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech,’” or if the government adopted the regulation “because of disagreement with the message [the speech] conveys,” then the court must treat the regulation as content based. Such a regulation is subject to strict scrutiny, and it is presumptively invalid.

The parties frame their arguments around Reed.

Austin argues first that its distinction between on-premises signs and off-premises signs is content neutral on its face. The City says that its distinction draws on a long, well recognized, and validated (even “ubiquitous”) tradition in zoning and sign-code practices, in which all levels of government distinguish in different ways between on-premises and off-premises signs. It claims that this traditional distinction is based upon the substantial government interests in regulating off-premises signs (like highway billboards), which pose especial traffic, safety, and even aesthetic concerns. Austin contents that digital billboards only add to those concerns. On the other hand, the City claims that on-premises signs are generally smaller, less distracting, and well-integrated into the existing property; it says that they also “implicate the compelling interest of businesses and property owners to advertise their goods and services on their own property.”

Austin contends that laws and regulations distinguishing between off-premises and on-premises signs, including its own, are content neutral. According to the City, that’s because the distinction is based on a sign’s location, not its content, subject, or viewpoint. It says that its sign regulation “singl[es] out no subject or viewpoint as a regulatory target.”

Austin argues next that the Fifth Circuit wrongly applied Reed in striking this provision of its Sign Code. The City claims that the lower court interpreted Reed to require a “read the sign” test, where a sign regulation is content-based if a person must read the sign itself in order to know if the regulation applies. But Austin contends that Reed does not support this test. It points to Justice Samuel Alito’s concurrence in Reed, joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy and Sonia Sotomayor, which provided examples of “some rules that would not be content based,” including “[r]ules distinguishing between signs with fixed messages and electronic signs with messages that change” and “[r]ules distinguishing between on-premises and off-premises signs”—exactly the rules at issue in this case.

Moreover, Austin contends that Reed’s reasoning itself refutes the Fifth Circuit’s read-the-sign test. The City claims that Reed relied on cases holding that laws were content neutral even when a person would have to read the sign to determine the law’s content-neutrality. Austin claims that Court cases instead turn on whether speech regulations “single out topics or subjects for distinct regulations” and thus “favor[] or disfavor[] particular topics or viewpoints.” The City says that the Fifth Circuit’s rule, which “would subject virtually all distinctions in sign regulation to strict scrutiny,” would perversely lead to less speech, because government officials, to avoid this, “may regulate with a far broader brush, thus suppressing more speech.” Alternatively, the City claims, courts would dilute strict scrutiny in order to uphold sensible laws (“like house-number identifications or event-related sign regulation”), thus undermining the law and creating further uncertainty.

Finally, Austin argues that its sign regulations are subject to intermediate scrutiny, and that they pass. It claims that because its regulations are content neutral, the proper test is intermediate scrutiny, not strict scrutiny. And it says that its regulations are sufficiently tailored to meet its important interests in safety and aesthetics. Alternatively, the City claims that because it validly rejected the plaintiffs’ requests to digitize their signs under the commercial-speech doctrine (which also uses intermediate scrutiny), the plaintiffs can only argue that the regulations are unconstitutionally overbroad (with respect to commercial speech). Austin says that the plaintiffs never raised this argument, and the evidence doesn’t support it.

The government weighs in as amicus to support Austin, emphasizing many of the same points. In particular, the government echoes the City’s arguments that its regulations are content neutral, and that they easily satisfy intermediate scrutiny. The government also claims that any “constitutional infirmities” in the regulations do not justify striking the regulations on their face.

The plaintiffs counter that Austin’s regulations are content based on their face, because they “depend on the communicative content of the signs—specifically whether they advertise activities on the premises . . . .” They point to the language of the regulation defining off-premises signs: those signs that “advertise a business, person, activity, goods, products, or services not located on the site where the sign is installed.” They say that this definition turns on a sign’s content. Moreover, the plaintiffs contend that the regulations’ consideration of the location of the signs (a concededly content-neutral consideration) does not save them; instead, it merely makes the regulations a content-based restriction on speech, not an all-out ban. According to the plaintiffs, the regulations still turn on the content of a sign.

The plaintiffs assert that this interpretation reflects the correct reading of Reed. That case, they say, “made clear that a law may be subject to strict scrutiny either because it draws facial distinctions based on content or because it is motivated by an impermissible content-based purpose.” The plaintiffs contend that Austin’s regulations fall squarely into the first category. They claim that Justice Alito’s examples are not to the contrary: a regulation that defines “off-premises” by its distance from a building, for example, is still content neutral; but a regulation that also depends on a sign’s content (as here) is content based. Contrary to the City, the plaintiffs contend that this is consistent with the Court’s prior opinions, and will not lead to courts striking laws that regulate speech based on its medium. They write, “A regulation is content-based when it depends on the content of the message expressed through a particular medium, not when it regulates the medium itself.”

Having established that strict scrutiny applies, the plaintiffs contend that Austin’s regulations fail. They say that even assuming that Austin’s interests in safety and protecting aesthetics are compelling government interests, the regulations are not narrowly tailored, because Austin “has provided no reason to think that digitizing the limited number of . . . off-premises signs would be more problematic than the unrestricted digitization of on-premises signs, which the [City] currently permits.” In other words, the plaintiffs say that Austin’s interests apply equally to on-premises signs, but Austin does not similarly restrict on-premises signs. The plaintiffs assert, contrary to the City, that this does not mean that all other premises regulations must fail, only that they cannot distinguish based on the content of the sign (as Austin’s do).

The plaintiffs argue next that even if the Court were to apply intermediate scrutiny, Austin’s regulations would fail. They say that the City has better tailored ways to achieve its interests in safety and aesthetics. For example, they contend that the City could simply “limit[] the frequency of message changes for both on-premises and off-premises signs” in order to meet the City’s concern about “periodically changing” off-premises signs that could threaten safety and aesthetics.

Finally, the plaintiffs argue that the City is wrong to say that their claims fail under the commercial-speech doctrine. The plaintiffs contend that their signs contain both commercial and non-commercial speech, and that the challenged regulations distinguish between off-premises and on-premises signs for both commercial speech and non-commercial speech. Based on these two facts, the plaintiffs assert that the commercial-speech test simply does not apply. In any event, for the same reasons as above, the plaintiffs claim that the regulations fail the commercial-speech test, intermediate scrutiny.

SIGNIFICANCE

While Reed sought to clarify the approach that courts must use in determining whether a government speech regulation is content based, the case instead generated mass confusion among the lower courts and often led to results that are inconsistent with the Court’s own pre-Reed precedents.

As most relevant here, lower courts have adopted very different approaches to Reed’s first question, whether the government regulation is content based on its face. For example, while the Fifth Circuit has adopted a broad understanding of Reed, reflected in its read-the-sign approach, other circuits have adopted narrower understandings that might tolerate regulations like Austin’s.

The confusion and uncertainty around Reed maybe shouldn’t surprise us. After all, the Reed Court itself seemed a little uncertain about its ruling. That’s why Justice Alito wrote his concurrence, joined by Justices Kennedy and Sotomayor, providing a list of longstanding and traditional content-neutral speech regulations that Reed would not overturn. Among these, Justice Alito explicitly included premises regulations, like Austin’s. The fact that the Fifth Circuit expressly distinguished Austin’s actual premises regulations from Justice Alito’s idealized premises regulations only further illustrates the confusion over Reed’s first question.

This case will (hopefully) provide some clarity and guidance. Still, this is no easy feat. The Court can readily see how a fixed, determinate rule, like the Fifth Circuit’s read-the-sign rule, may give courts clear guidance, but could also apply in an overly rigid way to strike speech regulations that don’t really have anything to do with the content of the speech. At the same time, the Court also understands that a more flexible rule—for example, one that looks to the purpose behind a government speech regulation—may more accurately reveal a government’s intent to discriminate by content, but is also much harder to measure with certainty, and may invite governments to implement content-based regulations under the guise of facial content neutrality.

Some of the amici offer suggestions. For example, the Knight Center and Professor Genevieve Lakier suggest that the Court adopt a more nuanced approach, in the form of a multi-factor test. Under this approach, courts would determine whether a regulation is content based by looking at the two questions in Reed, along with several other considerations that can help reveal when a government regulation actually discriminates by content. Look for the Court to road test these ideas, and others, at oral argument, as it seeks to clarify Reed and bring determinacy to the doctrine.

Court to Hear State Secrets, FISA Case

Steven D. Schwinn, University of Illinois Chicago School of Law

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this morning in a case testing the interplay between the state secrets privilege and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Here's my argument preview, from the ABA Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases, with permission:

Does Section 1806(f) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires certain judicial procedures when the government seeks to protect evidence in certain cases in the national security, displace the state-secrets privilege?

Case at a Glance

For at least 14 months between 2006 and 2007, the FBI operated a surveillance program within the Muslim community in Southern California in order to identify potential terrorists. Members of the community sued, arguing that the program and its agents engaged in illegal searches, and that the program and its agents illegally targeted members of the community because of their religion. The government moved to dismiss the claims under the state-secrets privilege.

INTRODUCTION

The state-secrets privilege is an evidentiary privilege with constitutional underpinnings that allows the government to move to block certain evidence that could threaten the national security. At the same time, Section 1806(f) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act prescribes a judicial process in certain circumstances for determining whether evidence could threaten the national security. This case tests the interplay of the state-secrets privilege and Section 1806(f).

ISSUE

Does Section 1806(f) displace the state-secrets privilege?

FACTS

For at least 14 months between 2006 and 2007, the FBI operated a surveillance program in Southern California called Operation Flex. According to the FBI, the purpose of the program “was to determine whether particular individuals were involved in the recruitment and training of individuals in the United States or overseas for possible terrorist activity.” According to the plaintiffs, the “central feature” of the program was to “gather information on Muslims.”

As part of the program, the FBI engaged Craig Monteilh to be a confidential informant. Monteilh’s supervisors, FBI Special Agents Kevin Armstrong and Paul Allen, instructed him to gather information on Muslims, particularly religious Muslims and individuals who might influence young Muslims.

In July 2006, Monteilh started attending the Islamic Center of Irvine (ICOI) in order to gather information. Monteilh attended daily prayers, classes, and special events; declared his desire to convert to Islam; and adopted the name Farouk al-Aziz. He also visited at least seven other mosques in Orange County, and infiltrated the local Muslim community in other ways, too.

On instructions from Armstrong and Allen, Monteilh secretly recorded nearly all of his interactions and took extensive hand-written notes. Monteilh ultimately gave the FBI “hundreds of phone numbers; thousands of email addresses; background information on hundreds of individuals; hundreds of hours of video recordings of the interiors of mosques, homes, businesses, and associations; and thousands of hours of audio recordings of conversations, public discussion groups, classes, and lectures.”

In early 2007, Armstrong and Allen instructed Monteilh to start asking more direct questions about the community’s willingness to engage in violence. Monteilh told several members of the community that he believed that he had a duty as a Muslim to take violent action and that he had access to weapons.

Several IOCI members reported Monteilh to community leaders, and one of them, in turn, called the FBI and instructed concerned members to call the Irvine Police Department. The IOCI sought and received a restraining order against Monteilh.

In October 2007, the FBI released Monteilh. His identity as an informant was revealed in February 2009, as part of a criminal prosecution for naturalization fraud of one of the IOCI member who initially reported Monteilh. The FBI, Monteilh, and others subsequently confirmed that Monteilh worked for the FBI. While the FBI disclosed some information about Monteilh’s activities, it maintains that “certain specific information” must remain secret in the interest of national security.

In September 2011, three members of the local Muslim community sued as a putative class. (Plaintiff Sheikh Yassir Fazaga was an imam at the Orange County Islamic Foundation; plaintiffs Ali Uddin Malik and Yasser AbdelRahim are practicing Muslims who regularly attend services at the ICOI.) They alleged that the FBI and its agents violated a variety of constitutional and statutory provisions, falling into two broad categories: unconstitutional search claims and religious-freedom claims. The plaintiffs’ religion claims allege that the defendants violated the First Amendment Religion Clauses, equal protection, the Privacy Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA).

The government moved to dismiss the case on a variety of grounds. As relevant here, the government invoked the state-secrets privilege and moved to dismiss the religion claims (but not the search claims) on that ground. (The state-secrets privilege protects evidence that, if revealed, could threaten the national security.) The government argued that the religion claims could not proceed without risking disclosure of certain evidence protected by the privilege. In support of its claim, the government submitted public and classified declarations by Department of Justice leaders.

The district court dismissed the plaintiffs’ FISA claim against the government on other grounds, and allowed the plaintiffs’ FISA claim against individual agents to go forward.

In a separate order addressing the government’s motion to dismiss under the state-secrets privilege, the court dismissed all of the plaintiffs’ remaining religion claims and the Fourth Amendment search claim (even though the government did not seek dismissal of the search claim under the state-secrets privilege). In so ruling, the court relied “heavily” on the government’s classified declarations and supplemental memorandum.

The court did not use the procedure for review of the evidence set out in Section 1806(f) of the FISA, which prescribes an in camera, ex parte process for courts to use when the government claims that “disclosure [of particular evidence] in a case or an adversary hearing would harm the national security of the United States.”  The court said that Section 1806(f) did not apply to non-FISA claims. (Remember that the government moved to dismiss only the non-FISA religion claims based on the state-secrets privilege. The court addressed the FISA claims separately.)

The Ninth Circuit reversed. The appellate court held that the Section 1806(f) procedure “displaces the dismissal remedy of the common law state secrets privilege as applied to electronic surveillance generally.” It ruled that the district court therefore should have used the Section 1806(f) procedures to evaluate the evidence and determine whether the state-secrets privilege applied. It directed the lower court, on remand, to apply Section 1806(f)’s ex parte and in camera procedures to “review any ‘materials relating to the surveillance as may be necessary,’ including material over which the Attorney General asserted the state secrets privilege, to determine whether the electronic surveillance was lawfully authorized and conducted.” The Ninth Circuit wrote that the lower court, in making this determination under Section 1806(f), could disclose to the plaintiffs “portions of the application, order, or other materials relating to the surveillance” if disclosure was “necessary to make an accurate determination.”

The FBI then brought this appeal.

CASE ANALYSIS

Section 1806(f) of the FISA directs a court to apply certain procedures whenever the government claims that disclosure of evidence in certain types of cases could threaten the national security. In particular, the Section requires the court to “review in camera and ex parte the application, order, and such other materials relating to the surveillance as may be necessary to determine whether the surveillance of the aggrieved person was lawfully authorized and conducted.” The Section goes on to say that “the court may disclose to the aggrieved person, under appropriate security procedures and protective orders, portions of the application, order or other materials relating to the surveillance only where such disclosure is necessary to make an accurate determination of the legality of the surveillance.”

The state-secrets privilege, in contrast, is an evidentiary privilege, with constitutional, separation-of-powers roots, that allows the government to protect evidence in proceedings when the government certifies that the evidence, if revealed, could threaten the national security. At the outside, the privilege allows the government to move to dismiss an entire case, if the putatively protected evidence is so central to the case that the case cannot move forward without it.

The case asks whether the Section 1806(f) process “displaces” the state-secrets privilege. This question, in turn, depends on the scope and operation of the state-secrets privilege and the interplay between the two.

The government argues first that the Ninth Circuit erred in ordering the district court to apply the Section 1806(f) procedure in the first place. The government points out that Section 1806(f) is available in only three limited situations defined in the Section itself, and that none of these includes a civil action like the plaintiffs’ case. The government says that the Ninth Circuit wrongly shoehorned this case into two of those three situations. First, the government contends that the Ninth Circuit erroneously considered the government’s motion to dismiss the case as notice of the government’s intent “to enter into evidence or otherwise use or disclose” the privileged information “against an aggrieved person,” thus satisfying one of the three situations that trigger a Section 1806(f) process. The government says that this misconstrues the state-secrets privilege, which is designed to protect information, not signal its disclosure and use. Second, the government asserts that the Ninth Circuit wrongly considered the plaintiffs’ request for relief in its civil suit as a “motion or request * * * to discover, obtain, or suppress evidence or information obtained or derived from electronic surveillance,” another of the three situations that trigger a Section 1806(f) process. The government contends that the plaintiffs’ prayer for relief in their civil case is simply not a “motion.”

Moreover, the government argues that the Ninth Circuit erred in applying the Section 1806(f) procedure. The government claims that the Ninth Circuit “reasoned that Section 1806(f) provides a mechanism for litigating a civil plaintiff’s claims to final judgment.” (Remember that the Ninth Circuit’s remand order directed the district court to “review any ‘materials relating to the surveillance as may be necessary,’ including material over which the Attorney General asserted the state secrets privilege, to determine whether the electronic surveillance was lawfully authorized and conducted.”) But the government says that “nothing in Section 1806(f) suggests that it was intended to be used to litigate, ex parte and in camera, the merits of a case.” Instead, the government contends that a Section 1806(f) proceeding culminates only in a grant or denial of a motion related to the admissibility of evidence, not a “review any ‘materials relating to the surveillance as may be necessary,’ including material over which the Attorney General asserted the state secrets privilege, to determine whether the electronic surveillance was lawfully authorized and conducted.”

The government argues next that Section 1806(f) does not displace the state-secrets privilege. It says that nothing in FISA even mentions the state-secrets privilege, much less suggests that FISA displaces it. And it says that Section 1806(f) is perfectly compatible “with the continued vitality of the privilege.” The government contends that even if there were any doubt, the government should interpret Section 1806(f) as not displacing the privilege.

Finally, the government argues that the state-secrets privilege has constitutional roots and is an essential aspect of presidential power. It claims that any congressional effort to displace or abrogate the privilege must therefore include a clear statement, and neither Section 1806(f) nor any other provision of FISA does.

The plaintiffs counter first that the state-secrets privilege does not support dismissal of their case. They contend that the state-secrets privilege, like other evidentiary privileges, supports the exclusion of evidence from a case so that no party can use it. But the plaintiffs say their religion claims don’t depend on secret evidence. And in any event, they contend that the government seeks both to exclude secret evidence and to use that evidence in its own defense in support of dismissal. They claim that the government’s effort both to exclude and to use the evidence is inconsistent with the very nature of a privilege (which is designed to entirely exclude evidence from a case).

Moreover, they assert that the government, in so arguing, improperly conflates the state-secrets evidentiary privilege with a categorical bar to litigation, which the Court has only applied in “government-contracting lawsuits where the “very subject matter’ of the suit is secret.” The plaintiffs say that they never contracted with the government, and never assumed the risk that they would forfeit judicial review of any contract, and so the categorical bar does not apply. The plaintiffs contend that the district court improperly dismissed their case, and that it should have simply excluded any privileged evidence and allowed the case to move forward.

The plaintiffs argue next that even if the state-secrets privilege would support dismissal, Section 1806(f) displaced it in cases involving electronic surveillance. They contend that Section 1806(f) applies here, because the government seeks to “use” secret information in its defense to the plaintiffs’ religion claims, and because the plaintiffs are “aggrieved persons” who asked, through their prayer for relief in their complaint, to “obtain” information that the government illegally gathered. Contrary to the government, they say that they therefore satisfy the threshold requirements for Section 1806(f).

The plaintiffs claim that the government’s arguments to the contrary are not supported by Section 1806(f)’s plain text, which, they say, is not limited to procedural motions. Moreover, they contend that the government’s reading would render meaningless Section 1810 of FISA, which creates a civil damages remedy for victims of unlawful electronic surveillance. They explain: “Defendants’ argument would leave the government free to win dismissal of virtually any Section 1810 suit simply by asserting that the underlying conduct was secret—whether or not it was lawful—thus nullifying the civil damages remedy Congress created to ensure surveillance remains constrained by law.”

The plaintiffs argue, contrary to the government, that FISA does, in fact, clearly displace the state-secrets privilege. They say that while FISA does not use the phrase “state secrets privilege,” it nevertheless refers to the privilege when it uses the phrase “national security,” which raises exactly the same concerns. The plaintiffs contend that this poses no constitutional problem, as the government argues, because Congress has clear authority to displace the state-secrets privilege as part of its authority to regulate surveillance and establish evidentiary rules for civil litigation over that surveillance. Moreover, the plaintiffs assert that displacement raises no constitutional problem for individual government agents, because FISA itself, in Section 1806(g), requires that any remedies must be “in accordance with the requirements of law,” including the Constitution.

Finally, the plaintiffs argue that the government’s position raises serious constitutional problems. They say that the government, by seeking both to protect secret information and to use that information in its own defense, effectively deprives the plaintiffs of “any judicial determination of whether the Government broke the law.” This aggrandizes the power of the executive at the expense of the judiciary and Congress, and leaves the plaintiffs without a judicial remedy.

SIGNIFICANCE

On the face of it, this case asks an extremely narrow and hyper-technical question—whether Section 1806(f) of the FISA displaces the state-secrets privilege. But in order to answer that question, the Court will likely have to address a much bigger issue, that is, the scope and operation of the state-secrets privilege.

In particular: How should courts treat and evaluate the government’s assertion of the state-secrets privilege over information that the government obtained through surveillance?

The government adopts a muscular view of the privilege. It emphasizes the privilege’s constitutional roots; argues that Congress cannot displace it or channel its operation through ordinary legislation like Section 1806(f); and contends that the courts must broadly defer to the government’s assertion of the privilege, and even dismiss cases when the government claims that they cannot be litigated without revealing privileged information that could threaten the national security. In other words, the government claims that courts must take the government’s say-so when it invokes the privilege, based only on the government’s affidavits in support, and without independently assessing—even ex parte and even in camera—the putatively protected material. And because of the privilege’s constitutional roots, the government claims that Congress cannot displace, or even channel, this deference through ordinary legislation. At risk of stating the obvious, the government’s interpretation of the privilege puts a tremendous amount of power in the hands of the executive branch to conceal particular evidence and even shut down cases entirely. (The government doesn’t have a particularly reassuring track record in this regard. In the very case where the Court established the modern privilege, United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953), the government turned out to have misled the courts about its need to invoke the privilege to protect the national security.)

The plaintiffs, for their part, proffer a much narrower view of the privilege. They emphasize the privilege’s common-law roots, and argue that Congress can, and did, displace it through Section 1806(f). But this approach could lead to the disclosure of secret information, even if only to a judge, alone in chambers, exercising discretion in a Section 1806(f) process, and thus threaten national security. This approach could also lead to the disclosure of secret information to other parties, as a judge might determine necessary, even further threatening national security.

The Court may have to decide between these approaches (or a third, middle way) and address the scope of the privilege for the first time since Reynolds.

I say “may” because the Court has an off ramp, maybe even two, and could dodge harder questions about the scope of the state-secrets privilege, at least for now. For one, the Court could simply rule that the plaintiffs’ case does not qualify for the Section 1806(f) process, as the government argues, and dodge the harder question whether Section 1806(f) displaces the state-secrets privilege. If so, the Court could simply reverse the Ninth Circuit and remand for further proceedings (which would presumably include consideration of the government’s assertion of the state-secrets privilege). For a second, the Court could rule on the displacement question without fully expounding the state-secrets privilege. If so, the Court could rule on the merits and, if it ruled for the government, remand the case for further proceedings (which again would presumably include consideration of the government’s assertion of the state-secrets privilege). Either way, the Court could avoid the harder questions about the scope of the state-secrets privilege. But either way, the case would almost certainly come back to the Court.

One final note. This is one of two cases this Term to raise issues related to the state-secrets privilege. (That’s extraordinary, by the way. But it’s also much needed, given that the Court hasn’t said anything serious about the privilege since Reynolds.) The other case is United States v. Zubaydah, argued on October 6, and previewed in the last issue of Preview. Zubaydah raises different questions about the privilege. But between the two cases, the Court this Term has a singular opportunity to define the scope of the privilege and state determinatively how it shall operate in the courts.

Check it Out: American Constitution Society Supreme Court Review

The American Constitution Society just published its fifth annual Supreme Court Review, covering the 2020-21 Term. The volume includes an amazing group of top scholars and practitioners, and an introductory Term in Review by Garrett Epps.

Argument Preview: Can a State Require "Proper Cause" for Public Carry?

Steven D. Schwinn, University of Illinois Chicago School of Law

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments tomorrow in a critical Second Amendment case testing New York's requirement that an applicant for a public carry license demonstrate "proper cause." Here's my argument preview, from the ABA Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases, with permission:

Case at a Glance

Robert Nash and Brandon Koch both had licenses under New York law to carry a firearm outside the home for hunting and target shooting. They both asked licensing officers to expand their licenses to permit them to carry their firearms for self-defense. In each case, the licensing officer declined, although the officer permitted Koch to carry a firearm when traveling to and from work. Nash, Koch, and the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association sued, arguing that the denials and limitations violated the Second Amendment.

 INTRODUCTION

The Supreme Court has ruled in recent times that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep arms within the home for self-defense. But at the same time, it also said that the Second Amendment does not prohibit longstanding, traditionally accepted regulations of firearms. This case tests whether New York’s “proper cause” requirement for carrying a firearm outside the home for self-defense falls within those longstanding, traditionally accepted regulations, and, if not, whether it sufficiently serves New York’s interests in reducing crime and gun violence.

ISSUE

Does New York’s “proper cause” requirement for carrying a firearm outside the home for self-defense fall within the longstanding, traditionally accepted regulations that categorically comport with the Second Amendment, and, if not, does it sufficiently serve New York’s interests?

FACTS

Under New York law, a person qualifies for a license to carry a concealed firearm outside the home if the person can show that “proper cause exists” for the license. The New York Penal Code does not define “proper cause,” but state courts have interpreted it to mean that an applicant must “demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community or of persons engaged in the same profession.” Klenosky v. N.Y. City Police Department, 428 N.Y.S.2d 256 (N.Y. App. Div. 1980). In other words, an applicant must show a “particularized” need to carry a gun, not just a “generalized desire.”

New York courts have developed “a substantial body of law instructing licensing officials on the application of [the proper-cause] standard.” Kachalsky v. County of Westchester, 701 F.3d 81 (2d Cir. 2012). The standard “requires consideration of all relevant factors,” including “the occupation, the background and the place of work” of the applicant

In most counties, a state-court judge acts as the licensing official and makes the determination; in New York City and two surrounding counties, a local police commissioner or a sheriff serves this function. The licensing official must consider all relevant factors bearing on the applicant’s “proper cause,” including the applicant’s occupation, background, and place of work, and the location where the applicant proposes to carry. An applicant can submit evidence in support of their applications; they can even submit new information to establish eligibility after a denial. An unsuccessful applicant can appeal the denial to state court.

Robert Nash and Brandon Koch both had licenses under New York law to carry a firearm outside the home for hunting and target shooting. They both asked licensing officers to lift those restrictions and to expand their licenses to permit them to carry their firearms for self-defense. Nash cited a spate of recent robberies in his neighborhood and his firearm safety training. Koch cited “his extensive experience in the safe handling and operation of firearms and the many safety training courses he had completed.”

After holding hearings, the licensing officer in each case declined to remove the restrictions, but clarified that Nash and Koch could carry arms for self-defense in certain locations. In particular, the officer wrote “that the restrictions DO ALLOW you to carry concealed [firearms] for purposes of off road back country, outdoor activities similar to hunting, for example fishing, hiking & campaign etc.” In addition, the officer wrote to Nash “that the restrictions are intended to prohibit” Nash from carrying arms for self-defense in places “typically open to and frequented by the general public.” The officer wrote to Koch that he “may also carry to and from work,” suggesting that Koch demonstrated adequate individualized safety concerns for a limited license to carry.

Nash, Koch, and the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association sued, arguing that New York’s standard violated the Second Amendment. The district court dismissed the case, and the United State Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit summarily affirmed. This appeal followed.

CASE ANALYSIS

The Supreme Court has only ruled twice in recent times on the Second Amendment. In the first case, District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual fundamental right to keep a firearm in the home for self-defense. In the second case, McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), the Court held that under the Fourteenth Amendment this right applied equally against the states.

While the Court in these cases held that the Second Amendment includes an individual right to keep a firearm in the home, it did not say much about the scope of that right, or the range of permissible government regulations. The Court only said that the right, like other fundamental rights, is “not unlimited,” and that nothing in the Second Amendment would call into question “longstanding measures” like laws forbidding firearms in sensitive places, restrictions on the commercial sale of firearms, bans on dangerous and unusual weapons, and laws that prohibit certain people (like felons and people with mental disabilities) from possessing firearms.

The lower courts picked up on the focus on text, history, and tradition in Heller and McDonald and coalesced around a two-part test. The first part asks “whether the regulated activity falls within the scope of the Second Amendment.” Ezell v. City of Chicago, 846 F.3d 888 (7th Cir. 2017). A law does not infringe on the Second Amendment if it falls within one of the “presumptively lawful regulatory measures” identified in Heller (and mentioned above), if it regulates conduct that is historically outside the scope of the Second Amendment, or if it falls within a category of longstanding, accepted regulations of firearms. This step requires courts to examine the history and tradition of government regulation of the activity in question.

If the historical evidence suggests that the regulated activity is not categorically unprotected by the Second Amendment, or if the historical evidence is inconclusive, then the courts determine whether the government regulation (the means) sufficiently serve the government’s purpose (the ends). For those laws that regulate the “core” of the Second Amendment (the right to keep and bear arms within the home for self-defense), the courts apply “strict scrutiny,” the most rigorous test known to constitutional law, and almost certainly strike the law. For those regulations that fall outside the “core” of the Second Amendment (laws that touch on the right to keep and bear arms, but don’t directly prohibit a person from keeping a firearm in the home for self-defense), courts apply “intermediate scrutiny.” Under this test, the government regulation must be substantially related to an important government purpose. Some regulations pass; others don’t.

Against this backdrop, the plaintiffs argue first that the Second Amendment includes a fundamental right to carry a firearm outside the home for self-defense, and that New York’s “proper cause” standard violates this right. In support, the plaintiffs point to the plain text of the Second Amendment. They say that the text protects the right not only “to keep” arms in the home, but also to “bear arms” outside of the home. They contend that this makes sense, given that their need for self-defense extends outside the home.

The plaintiffs also point to the history of the Second Amendment. They assert that the English right to bear arms (which spawned the Second Amendment) protected a right “to carry ordinary arms for a range of lawful purposes, chief among them self-defense.” They claim that this right only grew when it migrated to the United States. They contend that “[c]arrying arms was commonplace in early America, and it was regarded as an exercise of the fundamental, inherent right to every individual to defend himself.” The plaintiffs say that our experience after the Civil War (when we adopted the Fourteenth Amendment, which, the Court later ruled, applied the Second Amendment to the states) confirms this. In particular, they claim that federal officials “insisted that securing [freedmen’s] Second Amendment rights was critical to ensuring that they could protect themselves” from racially motivated atrocities, and that this “belief was premised on the understanding that the Second Amendment guaranteed the right to carry arms outside the home for self-defense.”

The plaintiffs argue that New York’s “proper cause” standard violates this right. They claim that the standard effectively reserves the right for those “happy few” who can satisfy the rigorous standard, but denies it to all others. They also contend that the loose standard puts too much discretion in the hands of officials who determine whether an applicant satisfies it. They say that the requirement cannot meet “any of the standards of scrutiny that the Court has applied to enumerated constitutional rights”—either strict scrutiny or intermediate scrutiny—and that it is therefore unconstitutional.

New York counters that the text, history, and tradition around the Second Amendment show that New York’s requirement comports with the Second Amendment, and that the conditions on Nash’s and Koch’s licenses are valid. The state says that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for self-defense does not mean that individuals can carry firearms anywhere and anytime; instead, “[l]ike all constitutional rights, the right to carry firearms incorporates the limitations embedded within the ‘historical understanding of the scope of the right.’” Moreover, the state claims that government officials have historically enjoyed broad discretion to determine when and where a person can carry a firearm, “and to restrict the carrying of concealable firearms, particularly in populous areas.” And it contends that its current law “is less restrictive than its historical antecedents, and thus does not violate any historically rooted constitutional norms.” New York asserts that many historical public-carry laws would not have allowed Nash and Koch to carry their firearms in public as widely as the state did here. The state writes that “no jurisdiction would have allowed what petitioners seek: the right to carry a handgun everywhere (or virtually everywhere)—including the crowded and populous areas of cities and towns—based on speculation that a confrontation warranting the use of deadly force might suddenly arise.” The state says that because its “proper cause” standard falls squarely within the range of traditional restrictions on the right to bear arms, it categorically complies with the Second Amendment.

But even if the Court were to scrutinize the “proper cause” standard, New York argues that it passes intermediate scrutiny, the appropriate test for this regulation. The state says that it has “compelling interests in reducing violent crime and gun violence,” and that the “proper cause” standard “substantially furthers those urgent goals, as a wealth of empirical studies confirm.” Moreover, it claims that the standard offers flexibility to allow “individuals to carry handguns in times and places for which they have established a non-speculative need for armed self-defense, hunting, or target shooting,” allowing officers to tailor restrictions specifically to meet the state’s interests.

Finally, New York argues that if the Court has any doubt whether the “proper cause” standard meets intermediate scrutiny, or any doubt about the evidence to support the intermediate scrutiny analysis (like the numbers and percentages of public-carry permits granted), then the Court should remand the case for further proceedings. According to the state, “On remand, New York could demonstrate the falsity of petitioners’ unsupported allegation that New York’s licensing regime flatly prohibits law-abiding citizens from carrying handguns in public for self-defense.”

The government filed an amicus brief in support of New York, and made substantially similar arguments. In addition, the government pointed to federal laws as examples of the types of gun regulations that legislatures may adopt, consistent with the Second Amendment.

SIGNIFICANCE

This is only the third case to come to the Court since 2008 testing the metes and bounds of the Second Amendment. And given that the Court said very little about the Second Amendment in those earlier cases, this case will almost certainly give us much more information—including whether and how the Second Amendment applies outside the home (a question that splits the lower courts), and a determinate framework for judging Second Amendment questions.

In other words, this case will determine whether and how the Second Amendment applies outside the home, telegraph the Court’s approach to state and federal gun regulations across the board, and direct the lower courts in judging all gun regulations. All that’s to say, the stakes are, well, high.

The Court has a range of options. First, at one extreme, the Court could simply rule that New York’s “proper cause” requirement falls within the longstanding, traditionally accepted regulations that are categorically exempt from the Second Amendment. Next, as a middle position, the Court could rule that the “proper cause” requirement falls within the Second Amendment’s ambit, and that it either survives or fails at some level of scrutiny, probably intermediate scrutiny. (The Court could decline to rule on the application of intermediate scrutiny and, as New York suggests, remand the case to the lower courts for more fact-finding on this question.) Finally, at the other extreme, the Court could rule that the right to carry a firearm outside the home for self-defense falls squarely within the “core” of Second Amendment rights, and that New York’s “proper cause” requirement fails.

It seems unlikely that this Court will go with the first extreme, and much more likely that it will go with the middle position or the last extreme. Such a ruling—especially that last extreme—could give substantial support to gun-rights advocates in challenging all manner of state and federal restrictions on firearms. Whatever the Court does, though, its ruling will deeply impact the policy and politics of gun regulations and the Second Amendment going forward.

Argument Preview: Does an Elected Body Violate Free Speech When it Censures a Member?

Steven D. Schwinn, University of Illinois Chicago School of Law

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this morning in Houston Community College System v. Wilson, the case testing whether an elected body violates the First Amendment when it censures one of its members for the member's critical and disruptive public speech. Here's my Preview, from the ABA Preview of United States Supreme Court cases, with permission:

Case at a Glance

In 2013, David Wilson was elected as a trustee on the Houston Community College System (HCC) Board, the governing body for the HCC. During his tenure, Wilson engaged in a variety of public activities that were highly critical of the Board and his fellow trustees. The Board adopted a resolution that censured Wilson and limited certain privileges that he enjoyed as a member. Wilson sued, arguing that his censure violated free speech.

INTRODUCTION

Elected legislative bodies in the United States have long exercised the power to censure members for their inappropriate or disruptive behavior or speech. As a general matter, bare censure does not violate free speech, because it does not chill or restrict the censured member’s speech. But Wilson contends that the Board impermissibly censured him for speech “outside the legislative sphere,” and that his censure impermissibly included punishment, because it limited certain privileges that he enjoyed as a member.

ISSUE

Can an elected legislative body, consistent with the First Amendment, censure a member for speech outside the legislative sphere and with restrictions on legislative privileges?

FACTS

In 2013, David Wilson was elected as a trustee on the Houston Community College System (HCC) Board, the governing body for the HCC. Wilson served as one of nine trustees on the Board, each of whom represented a single-member district for a six-year term and served without compensation.

During his tenure, Wilson engaged in a variety of public activities that were highly critical of the Board and his fellow trustees. For example, he arranged robocalls and spoke out on a local radio station in opposition to the Board’s decision to fund a campus in Qatar. He sued HCC in state court after the Board allowed a member to vote on a measure by videoconference. He separately sued HCC and the trustees in state court after the Board allegedly excluded him from an executive session. (In all, Wilson filed four lawsuits against HCC, costing HCC nearly $300,000 in legal fees.) And he hired a private investigator to confirm that one of the trustees actually resided in the district she represented, and to investigate HCC itself. He published his various grievances on a website, where he referred to his fellow trustees and HCC by name.

On January 18, 2018, the Board adopted a resolution censuring Wilson for his behavior. The resolution said that Wilson acted in a manner “not consistent with the best interests of the College or the Board, and in violation of the Board Bylaws Code of Conduct.” The resolution noted that the censure was the “highest level of sanction available” again Wilson.

The resolution instructed Wilson to “immediately cease and desist from all inappropriate conduct.” It further provided that Wilson was “ineligible for election to Board officer positions for the 2018 calendar year,” that he was “ineligible for reimbursement for any College-related travel” for the 2017-2018 fiscal year, and that he would have to seek Board approval to gain access to any funds in his Board “community affairs” account. It warned that “any repeat of improper behavior by Mr. Wilson will constitute grounds for further disciplinary action by the Board.”

Wilson then amended his first state-court complaint to include claims against HCC and the trustees for violating his free-speech rights under the First Amendment. He sought $10,000 in damages for mental anguish, $10,000 in punitive damages, and attorney’s fees. HCC and the trustees removed the case to federal court, on the ground that the case now involved a federal question.

The district court ruled that Wilson could not demonstrate an actual injury, and dismissed the case for lack of standing. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed and remanded the case for further proceedings. The court wrote, based on circuit precedent, that “a reprimand against an elected official for speech addressing a matter of public concern is an actionable First Amendment claim . . . .” Wilson v. Houston Community College System, 955 F.3d 490 (5th Cir. 2020).

In the meantime, Wilson resigned his seat for HCC’s District 2, and ran as a candidate for HCC’s District 1. He lost in a run-off election.

This appeal followed.

CASE ANALYSIS

As a general matter, the First Amendment protects speech against government action that restricts, punishes, or chills speech. But in general, it does not protect action that merely responds to speech with, well, more speech.

Applying those general principles, some courts have held that an elected body’s mere reprimand of a member, or other members’ mere reprimand of a member, without more, does not violate the First Amendment. That’s because the legislative body or its members simply responded to another member’s speech with more speech of its own (the reprimand). The Fifth Circuit, in contrast, held that the Board’s mere reprimand of Wilson through censure may violate the First Amendment. (Remember, the Fifth Circuit did not rule on the merits; it only remanded the case for further proceedings on Wilson’s First Amendment claim.)

The parties therefore dispute whether the Board’s censure of Wilson (with or without the censure’s restrictions on his privileges as a member) was punitive. If it was, then the First Amendment applies; if not, it doesn’t.

But Wilson adds a twist. Distinguishing the circuit courts that have held that mere reprimand through censure, without more, does not violate the First Amendment, Wilson adds that an elected body may merely censure a member for speech “within the legislative sphere,” that is, while conducting legislative business, but not for speech outside that sphere.

Against this backdrop, HCC argues first that the Board’s censure resolution amounted to permissible “peer criticism” that “may be voiced by other members individually or by a majority speaking for the body as a whole.” Either way, HCC contends that its resolution did not suppress or chill Wilson’s speech, “compel him to espouse the majority’s views,” or impede his performance of his job. (HCC’s argument hinges on the theory that the Board’s censure resolution was a mere reprimand, without punishment or sanction.) It therefore did not violate the First Amendment.

HCC argues next that its censure resolution is well supported by historical tradition, going back to the Founding, and even before. It says that the English parliament censured members as early as the sixteenth century for speech outside official parliamentary proceedings, often in ways that included discipline beyond bare censure; that this power migrated to colonial assemblies, and, later, state legislatures and Congress; and that censure in response to members’ speech is widely practiced today among local elected bodies.

HCC argues that recognizing a First Amendment claim in response to a bare censure resolution (as the Fifth Circuit did in this case) “would perversely halt that speech-rich local practice.” According to HCC, that’s because a “legislative censure is important government counter-speech on a matter of public concern.” In other words, censure adds to aggregate valuable speech in a public debate; it doesn’t impede speech. Because “the Constitution safeguards . . . the right of both sides to be heard,” HCC contends that disputes between elected members and a legislative body should be resolved by the voters.

The government weighs in as amicus to elaborate on the history and tradition of censure resolutions; to put a finer point on the argument that an elected body’s censure resolution amounts to government speech; and to emphasize that the Court need not address tougher issues outside the Question Presented (for example, when an elected body disciplines a member for speech beyond bare censure). (The government seems to go farther than HCC, in that it argues that an elected body can even discipline or punish a member, including by censure.)

Wilson counters first by conceding that a legislative body may censure a member’s speech “within the legislative sphere,” that is, on the chamber floor, in legislative hearings, or in legislative reports, for example. But he says that a legislative body may not censure or otherwise punish a member’s speech “outside the legislative sphere.” He claims, contrary to HCC, that mere censure, without more, is punitive, and thus an impermissible response to speech outside the legislative sphere. He claims that historical evidence, modern precedents, and contemporary practice all confirm this. He points to examples from the Founding Era, more recent court rulings (including Supreme Court rulings that have “held in other contexts that formal censures can violate the First Amendment”), and contemporary authorities on parliamentary procedure. He writes that “[m]any such bylaws expressly state that censures may not be entered against members in response to their speech.”

In any event, Wilson argues that the Board’s censure resolution here went farther than mere censure. He points out that it included revoking and limiting certain of his “privileges of office,” including barring his access to reimbursements for college-related travel and restricting his access to community affairs funds. He also points out that the censure expressly “directed” him “to immediately cease and desist” his outside activities against the Board or face “further disciplinary action.” He contends that because his censure was “plainly punitive,” it violated the First Amendment, “[w]hatever one might say about formal censures as a general matter.”

Wilson argues that the censure violates his free-speech rights under Bond v. Floyd. 385 U.S. 116 (1966). The Court in that case held that the Georgia legislature violated the First Amendment when it excluded a member for his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War. Wilson claims that while his censure falls short of exclusion, his censure nevertheless “included practical disabilities intended to prevent Wilson from performing his official functions”—just like exclusion. “Under Bond, the censure therefore violated the First Amendment.”

Wilson contends that his censure was not protected government speech. He says that in contrast to ordinary government speech (which might include a mere position statement, for example), his censure was punitive. He claims that if censures were government speech, “there would be nothing to stop elective bodies (or any governmental agency) from censuring journalists for critical coverage of the government, including (so it would seem) revoking privileges like press passes in response.”

Wilson argues that his punitive censure cuts against the values of the First Amendment, because it impedes speech (and doesn’t enhance aggregate speech). He claims that Board members had numerous other ways to express their opposition to his speech (and thus add to aggregate speech, consistent with the First Amendment). But he says that his punitive censure only serves to shut down his speech. He asserts that if his censure stands, “elective assemblies [would be empowered] to use their formal censure power to chill dramatically the speech of out-of-favor elected officials.”

Finally, Wilson emphasizes that a ruling in his favor would only disallow “a very narrow range of official censures.” According to Wilson, that’s because censures are “shockingly rare in the United States,” and almost always in response to speech “within the legislative sphere.” He says that a ruling in his favor would only disallow censures outside the legislative sphere, which are already “almost unheard of.”

SIGNIFICANCE

The Court has never squarely addressed whether an elected body’s censure of a member implicates or violates the First Amendment. Some lower courts have, however, and there’s some tension, or even conflict, in how they have addressed the question. At least three federal circuit courts (the Fourth, Sixth, and Tenth Circuits) and the Vermont State Supreme Court have all ruled that censure does not violate the First Amendment. The Fifth Circuit ruled to the contrary.

In sorting this out, look for the Court to consider several factors. First, the Court will likely consider whether an elected body’s mere reprimand, standing alone, is sufficient punishment to trigger First Amendment scrutiny. Next, if not, the Court will need to consider how much punishment or retaliatory action a censure resolution must include in order to trigger the First Amendment. In particular, the Court will have to consider whether an elected body’s restrictions on a member’s legislative privileges, without more, are sufficient punishment. Third, the Court may consider any differences between an elected body’s formal censure resolution and other members’ less formal reprimands (which are constitutionally protected), and whether those differences are constitutionally significant. Finally, the Court will consider Wilson’s claim that censure is valid for speech “within the legislative sphere,” but not outside it.

The Court’s approach may also depend on how it understands censure. If it understands censure as adding to aggregate speech, as HCC and the government argue, it will more likely allow censure, consistent with its more general trend to promote more speech, not less. If it understands censure as detracting from aggregate speech, however, as Wilson argues, it will more likely scrutinize censure. In a different dimension, if it understands censure as government speech, as HCC and the government argue, it will more likely allow censure, consistent with its more general trend to allow the government to say whatever it likes. If it understands censure as government punishment, however, as Wilson argues, it will more likely scrutinize censure.

Finally, and most importantly, the case could impact the censure practices of local governments across the country. HCC argues in its cert. petition that thousands of local governments authorize censure of members, and that “it is frequently used” for a range of member speech that “is quite broad.”