A split panel of the Fourth Circuit has handed First Amendment victories to pro-life pregnancy resource centers in the City of Baltimore and Montgomery County, Maryland. The decisions in these two cases hold that Baltimore and Montgomery County violated the First Amendment by requiring pregnancy resource centers to post signs indicating that their services were limited in certain ways. The majority opinions in Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns Inc. v. Baltimore and Centro Tepeyac v. Montgomery County reason that these ordinances compel noncommercial speech and fail strict scrutiny. Judge Niemeyer wrote the majority opinions in both cases, in which Judge Agee joined. Judge King dissented in both cases. (For my coverage of the oral argument in these appeals, see here. Howard Bashman has links to early news coverage at How Appealing.)
There is much that one can say about these cases as a matter of First Amendment law. But in this post I want to highlight some of the court dynamics revealed in the opinions.
First, this kind of panel alignment is one that has led to en banc reconsideration in the recent past. For example, Judge Niemeyer wrote the panel opinions in two Abu Ghraib contractor cases that were joined in by another Republican appointee and that drew a procedurally focused dissent from Judge King. But I would be surprised if the Fourth Circuit were to take these First Amendment cases en banc. Much of Judge King’s dissents in these two cases focus on case-specific things rather than basic principles of First Amendment law. And the ordinances do appear to have a “least restrictive means” problem, at a minimum.
Second, some of Judge King’s language in dissent is arresting. The concluding sentence of the introduction to Judge King’s dissent in the Baltimore case is particularly strongly worded: “Because these proceedings have thus followed a course more fitting a kangaroo court than a court of the United States, I write separately in dissent.” This “kangaroo court” accusation is much harsher than language that the Fourth Circuit itself has sharply criticized when used by counsel. See, for example, footnote 4 of United States v. Venable, which was joined in by Judge King.
Tons of academic amici in this case. Is every professor at U. Md. a professor of “Equality Jurisprudence”?
Wow, Judge King really went off. Is that the type of thing that is likely to elicit a call from the circuit’s Chief Judge (e.g., C.J. Jones in CA5 when the dist. judge in Texas (Sam Sparks) used mocking language towards counsel)?
-Cagle