Does the ACLU’s Steven Shapiro regret the organization’s amicus curiae brief in McCullen v. Coakley?

SCOTUSBlog is running a series of video interviews with the ACLU’s Steven Shapiro. Part 4, posted this morning, is on amicus curiae briefs. As Mr. Shapiro undoubtedly knows, one of the most important assets that an organization like the ACLU has in advocating in particular issue areas is credibility. Unfortunately, the ACLU lost a lot of credibility this past Term because of its amicus curiae brief in support of neither party in McCullen v. Coakley. Were such a question appropriate in the context of these videos (and it is not, I think), it would have been interesting to ask Mr. Shapiro whether he regrets filing this brief.

Mr. Shapiro was counsel of record on what has to be one of the least speech-protective briefs ever filed by the ACLU in the Supreme Court of the United States. The longest portion of this brief’s defense of the facial constitutionality of Massachusetts’ public sidewalk speech restrictions argues that the law is a narrowly tailored time, place, and manner restriction. See Section I.B. The ACLU did not pick up a single vote for this position on the facial constitutionality of the Massachusetts law–not from Justice Ginsburg, nor Justice Breyer, nor Justice Sotomayor, nor Justice Kagan, nor the Chief Justice. Indeed, the Court held unanimously that the law was facially unconstitutional.

The ACLU’s McCullen brief did leave open the possibility that the Massachusetts statute could be invalid on an as-applied basis. But this portion of the brief probably would have been taken by the Justices and their clerks as a half-hearted attempt to save face rather than a serious attempt to protect freedom of speech. If this were not apparent from the Table of Contents alone, readers might have been tipped off by footnote 5, which explains the how the ACLU’s position “evolved over time.”

McCullen now sets the standard for serious narrow-tailoring scrutiny of content-neutral speech restrictions. This unanimous decision is likely to protect significant amounts of speech that otherwise would not have been protected without it. And the ACLU was on the wrong side.

There once was a time when the ACLU defended the First Amendment even when doing so conflicted with other (politically, not classically) liberal goals. See, for example, the ACLU’s brief (with Mr. Shapiro as counsel of record) in Hill v. Colorado. But the McCullen brief suggests that those days are over.

Not all evolution is progress.

Shame on the ACLU for abandoning free speech principles in McCullen v. Coakley.

(cross-posted at Mirror of Justice)

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Fourth Circuit holds Virginia’s college newspaper alcohol advertising ban unconstitutional under the First Amendment as applied to Collegiate Times and Cavalier Daily

A split panel of the Fourth Circuit today held that Virginia’s ban on certain alcohol advertising in college newspapers violates the First Amendment as applied to Collegiate Times (at Virginia Tech) and Cavalier Daily (at UVA). This holding of as-applied unconstitutionality comes almost three-and-a-half years after the Fourth Circuit upheld the same regulation against a facial challenge in Educational Media Co. v. Swecker, 602 F.3d 583 (4th Cir. 2010). The panel declined to decide whether to apply a form of heightened scrutiny to the Virginia speech regulation, but held that the regulation violated the fourth prong of the four-prong Central Hudson test for assessing the validity of commercial speech restrictions. The opinion for the court in today’s decision, Educational Media Co. v. Insley, was authored by Judge Thacker and joined in by Judge King. Judge Shedd (the author of the panel opinion on the facial challenge) dissented. (For more information and background, see the ACLU’s Press Release touting the victory and AP coverage in the Washington Post.)

As described by the Fourth Circuit, the Central Hudson test provides that “a regulation of commercial speech will be upheld if (1) the regulated speech concerns lawful activity and is not misleading; (2) the regulation is supported by a substantial government interest; (3) the regulation directly advances that interest; and (4) the regulation is not more extensive than necessary to serve the government’s interest.” The parties agreed that prongs (1) and (2) were satisfied, and the court held that its earlier analysis in Swecker established that prong (3) was satisfied. Turning to prong (4), the court held that “the challenged regulation fails under the fourth Central Hudson prong because it prohibits large numbers of adults who are 21 years of age or older from receiving truthful information about a product that they are legally allowed to consume.” In support of this conclusion, the majority observed that “roughly 60% of the Collegiate Times’s readership is age 21 or older and the Cavalier Daily reaches approximately 10,000 students, nearly 64% of whom are age 21 or older.”

Reading today’s opinion in light of the Fourth Circuit’s earlier opinion in Swecker, one should feel some sympathy for Judge Lauck, who has now been twice reversed in this case. Judge Lauck initially held that the regulation violated the First Amendment on its face, only to be reversed in Swecker. Judge Lauck then upheld the regulation against an as-applied challenge under Swecker, only to be reversed in an opinion that, as a practical matter (though not as a technical matter), reaches the same bottom-line conclusion as Judge Lauck’s initial decision. Moreover, the main evidence relied upon by the Fourth Circuit panel in its consideration of the as-applied challenge was before the panel that decided Swecker and was discussed in Judge Moon’s dissenting opinion in that case.  Although the opinion contains several passages discussing the distinction between facial and as-applied challenges, this is an area of the law that is as murky (or murkier) in the Fourth Circuit as it is elsewhere throughout the federal judiciary.

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Volokh, Garnett, Paulsen, Zick, Lee, Chen, & Krotoszynski on McCullen v. Coakley

Following up on Tom Berg’s post at MOJ about the Democrats for Life brief and Michael Moreland’s post about the McConnell/Inazu/CLS et al. brief, see here for another amici curiae brief in support of petitioners inMcCullen v. Coakley. This one is filed on behalf of several First Amendment scholars: Eugene Volokh, Rick Garnett, Michael Stokes Paulsen, Timothy Zick, William E. Lee, Alan Chen, and Ronald J. Krotoszynski, Jr. The brief highlights the depth and breadth of academic criticism of Hill v. Colorado. The brief’s signatories have different views on the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence but agree on the importance of the First Amendment principles at stake in the case. Special thanks to Matthew Fitzgerald of McGuireWoods for taking the pen and for serving as counsel of record.

The table of contents for the brief provides a sense of the arguments:

I. EVEN STRONG SUPPORTERS OF ABORTION RIGHTS 
FAVORED FREE  SPEECH IN HILL v. COLORADO................... 6
A. Hill’s content-neutrality holding disagreed with the ACLU 
and drew immediate criticism from leading liberal scholars.............................. 8
B. Hill’s focus on protecting the unwilling listener was also widely 
doubted and criticized............................ 12

II. THE LOGIC OF HILL OPENED THE DOOR TO 
THE MORE RESTRICTIVE MASSACHUSETTS LAW HERE ................... 14

A. In the wake of Hill, scholars predicted trouble such as this 
ahead. ..................................................... 14

B. The courts have slid directly down 
Hill to McCullen..................................... 15

CONCLUSION ........................................................ 21

[cross-posted at Mirror of Justice]

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Some early observations on the Fourth Circuit’s en banc pregnancy center compelled speech cases

The Fourth Circuit issued its opinions yesterday in two pregnancy center compelled speech cases: Centro Tepeyac v. Montgomery County and Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns, Inc. v. Baltimore. The decisions tracked the tentative predictions I made after observing oral argument: a narrow, procedure-based decision to vacate and remand the permanent injunction against enforcement in the Baltimore case, and affirmance of the preliminary injunction against enforcement in the Montgomery case.

In the Baltimore case, Judge King wrote for an eight-judge majority (consisting of himself, Chief Judge Traxler, and Judges Motz, Gregory, Duncan, Davis, Keenan, Wynn, Floyd, and Thacker). Judge Niemeyer authored a dissenting opinion, in which Judges Wilkinson, Shedd, and Agee joined. Judge Wilkinson authored a separate dissent.

In the Montgomery County case, Judge King wrote for a nine an eleven-judge majority. Judge Gregory and Judge Davis, who did not hear the Baltimore case, joined the judges from the Baltimore case, as did Judge Wilkinson. In addition to joining Judge King’s opinion, Judge Wilkinson wrote a solo concurrence. Judges Niemeyer, Shedd, and Agee dissented. [Editorial note: This paragraph edited from the original version to correct error noted in the first comment.]

The combined opinions add up to about 140 pages and it’s July 4th, so detailed legal analysis will have to wait.

With respect to First Amendment law standing alone, my preliminary impression is that the decisions have the potential to inject confusion into what should otherwise be a straightforward application of First Amendment law for these ordinances. As Judge Wilkinson notes in his Greater Baltimore dissent, “[t]here has never been any dispute that the Ordinance forces organizations like the Center to communicate a message they would otherwise never utter. Given the dangers of compelled speech, this kind of mandated disclosure should be a last resort, not a first recourse.” Yet the majority opinion remands to allow Baltimore to try to establish that its ordinance was somehow a regulation of commercial speech. In support of this decision, the court provides a diffuse statement of the law surrounding commercial speech. The opinion does not endorse the application of the standard of review appropriate to commercial speech but instead asserts that the district court erred by rejecting application of this standard of review based on insufficient facts.

Instead of training its analysis on the speech actually regulated–the speech that takes place in the centers where the government-ordered messages must be posted–the majority opinion sweeps in the need for considering things like “the scope and content of [the Center’s] advertisements.” This focus apparently derives from Fargo Women’s Health Organization, Inc. v. Larson, 381 N.W. 2d 176 (1986), which the majority discusses in detail. But that case dealt with a preliminary injunction that prohibited deceptive advertising rather than legislation compelling delivery of the government’s message in conjunction with in-person speech about pregnancy. Indeed, the North Dakota Supreme Court struck out the compelled-speech portion of the underlying injunction in Larson even though–unlike the Baltimore and Montgomery County ordinances–that injunction directly regulated advertising rather than the in-person provision of information. (It may also be worth noting that this non-binding decision of the North Dakota Supreme Court predated the binding decision of the Supreme Court of the United States discussing the boundaries of commercial speech doctrine in Riley v. National Federation of the Blind, 487 U.S. 781 (1988).)

Although en banc rehearing is typically reserved for “questions of exceptional importance” (FRAP 35), it does not follow that en banc decisions actually resolve questions of exceptional importance. The Greater Baltimore decision does not. From the perspective of First Amendment law, its principal defect is failure to delineate the operative legal principles for separating commercial speech from non-commercial speech and explain why those principles called for the kind of discovery it thought necessary. To the extent that it does discuss these principles, the majority’s analysis drifts from focus on the nature of the speech directly burdened by the in-center positing requirement. But this drift is largely a consequence of its focus on discovery and procedure rather than elaboration of First Amendment law. Hopefully the opinion’s diffuse discussion of commercial speech doctrine may at least avoid doing serious damage to First Amendment law precisely because it is so diffuse.

Nor does the Centro Tepeyac decision resolve any questions of exceptional importance. Its affirmance of the district court’s conclusion that strict scrutiny applies to the challenged ordinance is noteworthy but uncontroversial. Had it not relied so heavily on the “abuse of discretion” standard of review, parts of that opinion would be more problematic. The challengers bore the burden of showing a likelihood of success on the merits, but once the court properly recognized that strict scrutiny was necessary, it should have required the government to demonstrate narrow tailoring. It did so, in part. But as Judge Niemeyer points out in dissent, this should have included consideration of less restrictive alternatives to compelled speech for both sentences of the compelled speech.

Given how little these decisions actually decided as a matter of First Amendment law, it seems the principal legal effect of the court’s en banc consideration in that area was to deprive the panel opinions in these cases of their precedential force. As someone who thinks those panel opinions were correctly decided in the first instance, that consequence is unfortunate. But the litigation will continue. And barring some surprising fact development or substantial change in governing law, I remain hopeful that the cases will ultimately end up yielding results close to the initial panel decisions.

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Will the Supreme Court overturn Hill v. Colorado in McCullen v. Coakley?

The Supreme Court’s grant of certiorari today in McCullen v. Coakley is important for First Amendment law, although likely to be overlooked in most of the reporting on today’s other important grants and opinions. One of the main items of interest from early reporting is what this grant might mean for the future of Hill v. Colorado, a terrible First Amendment decision issued by the Court in 2000. As much as I would like to see the Court overrule Hill, it does not need to do so in order for the petitioners in McCullen to prevail on their First Amendment challenge. And while I believe both that the McCullen petitioners should win and also that the Court should overrule Hill, I think it much more likely that the petitioners will win without the Court overruling Hill.

There are important differences between the Colorado law upheld in Hill and the Massachusetts law challenged in McCullen. These statutory differences could have significance for both the content neutrality and tailoring determinations, as laid out in the petition. Hill addressed the constitutionality of a floating buffer zone that prohibited close physical approaches without consent in an area surrounding health care facilities. McCullen involves the constitutionality of fixed exclusion zones at freestanding abortion clinics. The law challenged in McCullen expressly exempts agents and employees of the abortion clinics from its reach, and operates to prohibit stationary handbilling and stationary speech from a conversational distance within the exclusion zone. Another state law already prohibits obstruction to clinic entrances, but that law preserves speakers’ “rights to engage in peaceful picketing which does not obstruct entry or departure.”

As explained in an  amicus brief in support of certiorari that I co-authored and  filed on behalf of Professors Richard Garnett, Michael Stokes Paulsen, and Eugene Volokh in this round of McCullen (as well as an amicus brief in support of certiorari on behalf of a slightly larger group of law professors in an earlier round of McCullen), the Massachusetts law fails narrow tailoring even if it is held to be content neutral. I think it unlikely that a majority of the Court would wish to further ensconce the dubious content-neutrality reasoning of Hill, but there may nonetheless be a majority of the Court in favor of leaving it undisturbed for the time being. Both goals can be accomplished by assuming without deciding that the challenged Massachusetts law is content neutral. While that would not be the optimal First Amendment outcome, it would also be an improvement over the legal status quo.

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Another take on standing to seek injunctive relief against a statute whose enforcement has been enjoined (in an unappealed district court judgment) because of facial unconstitutionality under the First Amendment

For a comparison case that more closely tracks the analysis I suggested would have been proper in my prior post on Judge Sutton’s opinion for the Sixth Circuit in Platinum Sports Ltd v. Snyder, see Judge Kanne’s opinion for the Seventh Circuit in Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. v. Schober. The key reasoning is contained in the following four paragraphs:

Right to Life submits that the threat of enforcement inherent in the statute chilled its participation in the July 2003 special election and will continue to chill its speech unless the federal courts provide injunctive relief. “A plaintiff who mounts a pre-enforcement challenge to a statute that he claims violates his freedom of speech need not show that the authorities have threatened to prosecute him; the threat is latent in the existence of the statute.” Majors v. Abell, 317 F.3d 719, 721 (7th Cir. 2003) (internal citations omitted); see Virginia v. Am. Booksellers Ass’n Inc., 484 U.S. 383, 393 (1988). The instant case, however, presents a unique circumstance because the statute at issue has been declared unconstitutional by a district court and that ruling was not appealed.

Although it is highly unusual to seek injunctive relief when a judgment that was not appealed has already rendered a challenged statute unconstitutional, Right to Life’s argument in favor of Article III standing is not “frivolous,” as the Board contends. Right to Life presents a two-step argument. First, Right to Life points out that the injunction entered against the Board to prevent enforcement of the statute against theWisconsin Realtors Ass’n plaintiffs did not extend to Right to Life. Indeed, district courts lack the authority to enjoin the “enforcement of contested statutes or ordinances except with respect to the particular federal plaintiffs.” McKenzie v. City of Chicago, 118 F.3d 552, 555 (7th Cir. 1997) (quoting Doran v. Salem Inn, Inc., 422 U.S. 922, 931 (1975)); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(d) (“Every order granting an injunction . . . is binding only upon the parties to the action . . . .”). Right to Life is correct in asserting that the injunction against enforcement granted in the Wisconsin Realtors Ass’n case does not protect it, a non-party to the Wisconsin Realtors Ass’ncase.

The second step of Right to Life’s argument is that the declaratory judgment granted in the Wisconsin Realtors Ass’n case does not limit the power of the Board to bring prosecutions under the statute. Certainly, the statute cannot be repealed by a district-court opinion; only the Wisconsin legislature can repeal the statute. Furthermore, a district court’s declaration that the statute is unconstitutional does not automatically stop state officials from trying to enforce the statute. Coupled with the Board’s refusal to issue an advisory opinion, Right to Life reasons that this is enough to present a live controversy to the federal courts.

Right to Life’s argument, however, fails to tie this theoretical harm to an actual and imminent threat of enforcement. The Board did not appeal the Wisconsin Realtors Ass’n case. Implicitly, the Board has conceded that the statute is unconstitutional. The State’s Attorney General conceded before the Wisconsin Realtors Ass’n litigation that the statute was unconstitutional in its petition to the Wisconsin Supreme Court to determine the constitutionality of Act 109. Right to Life makes no effort to satisfy its burden of persuasion by showing that any Wisconsin official, let alone the Board, has ever tried to enforce a statute in these circumstances.

The only seemingly relevant difference between this case and Platinum Sports is that the plaintiffs in the later cases in Platinum Sports were represented by the same lawyer. But this difference makes no difference. For a while, some circuit courts had applied a “virtual representation” doctrine under which representation by the same lawyer might have made a difference in the preclusion analysis. But the Supreme Court rejected the doctrine of virtual representation in Taylor v. Sturgell, 553 U.S. 880 (2008).

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Standing to assert a First Amendment challenge to a sign ordinance that the state has agreed not to enforce

Thanks to a recent post by Jonathan Adler at Volokh Conspiracy, I read with great interest last week Judge Sutton’s opinion for the Sixth Circuit in Platinum Sports Ltd. v. Snyder. The underlying claim was a First Amendment challenge to a Michigan ordinance restricting signs for sexually oriented businesses, but the opinion affirms dismissal on the non-merits ground of lack of standing. The decision addresses difficult issues surrounding “facial challenge” doctrine and standing to challenge a law that the relevant enforcement officials agree is unconstitutional and have agreed not to enforce. If this were a casenote outline, I would probably classify this decision as “right outcome; wrong reasoning.” But I’m not sure and it raises important questions worth considering, so here’s an analysis.

The basic situation consists of three cases: (1) Attorney A, representing Client X, files a complaint seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against Governor, alleging that a state law is unconstitutional–on its face and as applied–under the First Amendment; (2)  Attorney A, representing Client Y, files a second complaint seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against Governor and Attorney General, making the same constitutional challenge; and (3) Attorney A, now representing Client Z and seeking to represent a class of approximately 400 similarly situated businesses covered by the claim, files a complaint seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against Governor and Attorney General, making the same constitutional challenge as in the first two cases.

The timeline of relevant events in these cases is as follows:

• April 25, 2011: Complaint in case (1) is filed.
• July 14, 2011: Hearing in case (1) on motion for preliminary injunction and motion to dismiss.
• July 20, 2011: Complaint in case (2) is filed.
• July 26, 2011: District court is case (1) grants preliminary injunction and denies motion to dismiss.
• August 25, 2011, Case (1) and case (2) are terminated by a final judgment in Plaintiffs’ favor, together with injunctions against enforcement of the statute.
• October 21, 2011: Complaint in case (3) is filed.

The Sixth Circuit held in Platinum Sports, Inc. v. Snyder that the plaintiff business in case (3) lacked standing because it suffered no cognizable injury. I think that bottom-line conclusion is correct, but for a different reason than provided in Judge Sutton’s opinion for the court.

Let’s begin with common ground. The mere “on-the-books existence” of a statute is not enough to create legally cognizable injury. The statute must have some kind of injurious effect that a federal court is capable of redressing. Federal courts do not take statutes off the books. They enter judgments and remedies that prevent enforcement of laws. Judge Sutton’s statement of these relevant principles seems just right: “[T]he question is whether the claimant has an ‘actual and well-founded fear that the law will be enforced against them.’ Virginia v. Am. Booksellers Ass’n, Inc., 484 U.S. 383, 393 (1988). Absent some ‘credible threat’ of enforcement, no injury exists. Babbitt v. United Farm Workers Nat’l Union, 442 U.S. 289, 298 (1979).”

The Platinum Sports opinion reasons that there was no credible threat of enforcement against the plaintiff in case (3) at the time the complaint was filed because the statute had already been declared facially unconstitutional and its enforcement had been enjoined in an order agreed to by the Governor and the Attorney General. The assessment that there was no credible threat of enforcement is probably right, but not for the reason given in the opinion.

The opinion’s analysis turns on an explication of facial challenge doctrine:

A party who brings a facial challenge to a law “seeks to vindicate not only his own rights, but those of others who may also be adversely impacted by the statute in question.” City of Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41, 55 n.22 (1999). A successful facial challenge invalidates a law in all of its applications, “forbidd[ing]” any enforcement of it. Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 613 (1973). The upshot is that a State may not enforce such a law against anyone.

But what constitutes a “successful facial challenge”?

Consider the order in case (2) (which is the same in all material respects as the order in case (1)): “IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that judgment declaring that M.C.L. 252.318a violates U.S. Const., Amend. I (the First Amendment to the United States Constitution) is entered for Plaintiff and Defendants are permanently ENJOINED from enforcing M.C.L. 252.318a.”

Suppose that the defendants believe that the district court’s understanding of the First Amendment in cases (1) and (2) is wrong. Do the judgments and injunctions in those cases protect all other SOBs in the state against enforcement of the law?

The Sixth Circuit found the answer to this question in facial challenge doctrine, stating: “[T]he district court’s orders [in cases (1) and (2)] declared the laws facially unconstitutional, necessarily prohibiting their enforcement against anyone, including the plaintiff [in case 3].” Judge Sutton’s opinion for the court appears to assume that the injunctions in these cases authoritatively prohibit enforcement against anybody else, but the reason for this assumption is unclear:

In this instance, the district court entered a stipulated final judgment declaring the two laws facially unconstitutional and enjoining the Governor and Attorney General from enforcing either law. Nor is there any reason to fear the Governor or Attorney General will sidestep these orders. They agreed to their entry. If any doubt remained about the point, the Governor and Attorney General eliminated it in this case. In their appellate brief, they have recognized the “provisions to be unconstitutional,” Br. at 22, and have promised that they “will not be enforced,” id. at 16. Anything in this world is possible, we suppose. But the legal possibility that this Governor or this Attorney General will enforce these laws in the face of these injunctions is: zero.

While the opinion states that the “legal possibility” of enforcement is “zero,” that is distinct from a claim about “legal permissibility.” The opinion appears to assume that facial challenge doctrine can somehow expand the binding legal effect of a judgment or remedy. But  facial challenge doctrine cannot expand the binding legal effect of a judgment or remedy because the theory of constitutional infirmity underlying a particular judgment does not itself bind except through embodiment in a remedy or through preclusion or precedent.  In order to know the binding legal effect of the district court’s ruling in cases (1) and (2), it is therefore necessary to know the preclusive effect of the underlying judgment and the terms and permissible reach of the injunction issued. The declaration of facial unconstitutionality can only reach as far as these other doctrines permit it to reach. (Another means by which judicial declarations of law can bind in courts is through stare decisis, but that doctrine has no application here because a district court ruling has no precedential effect for other cases.)

To see why this distinction is important, suppose that the AG (enjoined in cases (1) and (2) beginning in August 2011) had sent a letter in September 2011 threatening enforcement of the ordinance against Z (the plaintiff in case (3)). Would Z have had standing to file a federal lawsuit seeking declaratory and injunctive relief on October 21, 2011? Yes, Z would have had standing. The injunctions in cases (1) and (2) protect X and Y (the plaintiffs in those cases), but these injunctions do not themselves eliminate the threat of enforcement against Z. See Doran v. Salem Inn, Inc., 422 U.S. 922, 931 (1975) (“[N]either declaratory nor injunctive relief can directly interfere with enforcement of contested statutes or ordinances except with respect to the particular federal plaintiffs, and the State is free to prosecute others who may violate the statute.”). (It may also be worth adding that, not only would Z have had standing, but that if Z had wanted a federal forum for its lawsuit, Z should have filed suit quickly after receiving the threat letter because the initiation of an enforcement action in state court can result in Younger abstention.)

There was no threat letter here, so why does any of this make a difference? The comparison reveals that the real legal basis for the absence of any threat of enforcement is not the “successful facial challenge” in case (1) or (2), but the defendants’ agreement that the statute is unconstitutional and their promise (rather than their legal obligation) not to enforce the statute. The fact that they made this agreement in connection with a stipulated judgment and an order to pay over $20,000 in attorneys’ fees makes their commitment to non-enforcement credible.

This discussion of the reasoning underlying the no-standing dismissal in Platinum Sports is not just idle nitpicking about a minor issue. The effectiveness of agreement about unconstitutionality to preclude standing by eliminating threatened enforcement goes to the very fundamentals of pre-enforcement adjudication of constitutional challenges to constitutionally questionable laws. Consider, for example, a pre-enforcement challenge to a State’s partial-birth abortion prohibition in which the sole theory of constitutional infirmity is that the statute is unconstitutional as applied to performance of the constitutionally protected D&E procedure. (Such a limited claim would be unusual but not completely implausible given the Supreme Court’s statement of a preference for as-applied challenges in this area.) Suppose the Attorney General’s position is that the statute does not criminalize the D&E procedure, but even if it did, the State would never use the statute to prosecute for the performance of a D&E because the Attorney General agrees that the statute would be unconstitutional as applied to D&Es. Suppose that no prosecutor can initiate a prosecution without the AG’s approval. If an agreement not to enforce precludes standing, then there would be no standing to bring this challenge. Or would there be?

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How should a TSO respond to an individual’s bizarre state of dishabille?

In Tobey v. Jones, the Fourth Circuit needed to decide whether Aaron Tobey’s First-Amendment-based Bivens claim for money damages against two TSA officers (Jones and Smith, their real last names) survived the federal government’s 12(b)(6) motion. These officers (TSOs) radioed for police assistance after Tobey, having been selected for “enhanced secondary screening” at a Richmond (VA) International Airport security screening checkpoint, stripped down to his running shorts and socks to reveal portions of the Fourth Amendment written on his bare chest. When the airport police arrived, they arrested Tobey. They then questioned him and ultimately released him after about an hour. Tobey boarded his plane without any further difficulty. A few months later he sued the TSOs (Jones and Smith), the airport police, the airport commission, and some higher-level officials at the commission, the Department of Homeland Security, and the TSA.

The district court (Judge Hudson, EDVA) dismissed all of the claims except for a First Amendment-based claim that Smith and Jones “caused [Tobey’s] seizure . . . because of the message conveyed by [his] silent, nonviolent expression of objection to the TSA’s screening policies . . . and thereby engaged in content and/or viewpoint discrimination.” The government appealed this denial.

A split panel of the Fourth Circuit affirmed. Judge Gregory, joined by Judge Duncan, held that Tobey’s complaint “plausibly set forth a claim that the TSA agents violated his clearly established First Amendment rights.” Judge Wilkinson authored an empassioned dissent.

Eugene Volokh and most commenters at Volokh Conspiracy have expressed agreement with the panel majority’s analysis. Are they  wrong about what “sounds right”? I think so. Not because of disagreement with Volokh’s take on the First Amendment, but because he focuses on First Amendment principles apart from the appropriate pleading rules and the particular facts of the case.

Viewed through the lens of Twombly and Iqbal, Tobey needed to plead facts rendering it plausible that the TSOs called the police because of disagreement with his message rather than because he stripped off his shirt and pants in the screening area. He did no such thing. Indeed, according to the district court, Tobey’s counsel conceded at oral argument that his behavior was bizarre, “and that the TSOs were justified in summoning the RIC Police for further inquiry.” It seems to me that should be the end of it, for that is all the TSOs are alleged to have done–summon the police. When people act in a concededly “bizarre” fashion in an airport screening area, the TSOs should call the police and let them handle the bizarreness. Whether the police should have handcuffed and arrested Tobey is a separate question from whether the TSOs should have called the police to deal with Tobey. And it is only that latter question that was at issue in the Fourth Circuit appeal.

I should also add that Judge Wilkinson’s take on the effect of taking off one’s shirt and pants in an airport screening area seems better grounded in the reality of modern air travel than Judge Gregory’s. Judge Wilkinson wrote that “[o]utside a few limited contexts, such as public swimming pools, removing one’s shirt and pants will always attract other people’s attention and distract them from whatever they happen to be doing.” Judge Gregory responds that “[p]assengers routinely remove clothing at an airport screening station, and in fact are required to do so by TSA regulations.” But this misses the point. Passengers do not routinely go bare-chested, nor are they are required to do so by TSA regulations. Judge Wilkinson may have overstated the case slightly in asserting that “[i]t is sheer fancy to think that defendants had anything on their minds other than eliminating the distraction that Tobey’s state of dishabille was causing.” But if so, only slightly. And in any event it was Tobey’s burden to allege facts making the alternative retaliation-for-protest explanation plausible.

Judge Gregory’s appeal to “autonomy and the celebration of difference” seems misplaced at an airport screening point. And he surely overstates the case when he writes that “[f]or us to hold today that it is reasonable to cause an arrest due to bizarre behavior and nothing more would violate the most basic [tenets] of our Constitution.” For that redescribes what the TSOs were alleged to have done (call the police) with what followed from that call through the decisions and actions of the police (Tobey’s arrest). Judge Gregory writes that “[i]t is an undoubtedly natural consequence of reporting a person to the police that the person will be arrested; especially in the scenario we have here, where TSA and RIC police act in close concert.” Yes, here, an arrest was a consequence. But to call it an “undoubtedly natural consequence” is to let the adverb and the adjective do too much work, depriving the police of any independent agency. Or so it seems to me.

 

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No problems with pregnancy centers in Montgomery County, but there ought to be a law?

After seeing the link from Howard Bashman’s How Appealing and some of my prior posts about the Fourth Circuit pregnancy center cases , my friend (and CUA lawprof) Mark Rienzi sent me the plaintiff’s memorandum of law in support of summary judgment in the Montgomery County, Maryland pregnancy center compelled speech case. That case, argued the same morning as the Baltimore case, has proceeded through full discovery and to summary judgment briefing while the appeal of the preliminary injunction has been pending at the Fourth Circuit. This summary judgment record is not before the Fourth Circuit in the en banc appeal, but it is the record to which the legal standard identified by the Fourth Circuit will be applied by the district court.

I am not an impartial observer, as I was already convinced that the Montgomery County and Baltimore ordinances were unconstitutional and I have long supported the pro-life mission of the pregnancy centers targeted by the ordinances. But I believe that an impartial observer would share my assessment that the record in the Montgomery County case firmly establishes the unconstitutionality of the Montgomery County ordinance.

Reviewing this summary judgment memorandum reminds me of two episodes in the oral arguments over the Baltimore and Montgomery County ordinances.

First, near the end of the argument over the Baltimore ordinance, Judge King and Judge Wilkinson had an interchange in which Judge King advocated more discovery while Judge Wilkinson asserted that discovery is not the friend of the First Amendment (his point being that the time it takes to engage discovery is time during which protected speech may be unconstitutionally silenced). The discovery set forth in this brief shows that both judges are right and wrong in different ways. At least as far as the Montgomery County ordinance is concerned, discovery has been the friend of the First Amendment in the sense that it establishes the unconstitutionality of the ordinance. I expect discovery will establish the same about the Baltimore ordinance if that is the disposition ordered by the Fourth Circuit. But extensive discovery was not necessary. Under strict scrutiny, it is not the burden of the challengers to adduce evidence showing that the ordinance is unconstitutional. It is the burden of the government to show that the ordinance is the least restrictive means of accomplishing a compelling government interest. And the evidence on which the legislature acted should have been set at enactment such that extensive discovery is unnecessary.

Second, near the end of the argument over the Montgomery County ordinance, Rienzi as counsel for the challengers emphasized that the case was “fully teed up” for decision by the district court. In my estimation, this brief makes clear why he thought that was worth emphasizing.

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Artful characterization of allegedly misleading advertisement in Baltimore pregnancy center oral argument

Something has been bothering me for a while about the en banc oral argument last month over a Baltimore ordinance that requires “limited-resource pregnancy centers” to post a notice that they do not refer for abortion or birth control services. I’ve now done some follow-up research. Others may view the results of this research differently, but in my view, counsel for Baltimore’s artful characterization of an advertisement in the record probably misled others present at the argument in the same way that it (temporarily) misled me.

At the argument, counsel for Baltimore asserted that the city was trying to combat “consumer deception in the offer of pregnancy services.” A powerful part of this argument came just two minutes in, when counsel pointed the court to an “Option Line” advertisement in the Joint Appendix that she described as “clearly and inherently misleading.” Counsel argued that the advertisement  was misleading because it offered “medical services” including “abortion” and “morning-after pill,” even though none of the centers actually offered abortions or the morning-after pill. Until near the end of the argument, none of the judges questioned counsel’s characterization of the Option Line advertisement even though she pointed to the page in the Joint Appendix where this “clearly and inherently misleading” advertisement could be found. And by the time one judge asked about it, it seemed as if the rest of the judges had already accepted the characterization.

This has been bothering me because, shortly after the argument, I googled “Option Line” and I could not see how someone scanning the Option Line website would get the impression that one could use the referral service to obtain either an abortion or the morning-after pill. I thought then that, unless Option Line’s advertising had changed substantially between passage of the ordinance (when the Baltimore City Council was allegedly concerned about deception) and the afternoon of the oral argument (when I reviewed the Option Line website), there was a real possibility that counsel for Baltimore had artfully and somewhat misleadingly characterized the advertisement in the JA.

I recently listened to the audio to verify my notes, and I pulled the Joint Appendix off of PACER to check the actual advertisement.  I’ve posted the relevant JA page here. The advertisement contains the words “abortion” and “morning after pill” and “medical services.” But, in my view, the advertisement cannot reasonably be viewed as offering the “medical services” of either “abortion” or the “morning-after pill.” In relevant part, the advertisement states:

Our consultants will connect you to nearby pregnancy centers that offer the following services:

• Free pregnancy tests and pregnancy information
• Abortion and Morning After Pill information, including procedures and risks
• Medical services, including STD tests, early ultrasounds and pregnancy confirmation
• Confidential pregnancy options

There is an obvious difference between offering information about abortion and the morning-after pill, on the one hand, and offering medical services such as the provision of abortion and the morning-after pill, on the other hand. Baltimore’s argument glides right over this difference. Unfortunately, Baltimore’s artful characterization of this advertisement mattered to the oral argument. Approximately 35 minutes into the argument, for example, Judge Shedd mentioned to counsel for the centers that “we’ve heard about the website that contained the false information,”thus suggesting that he accepted counsel’s artful characterization of the Option Line website.

Near the very end of the argument (around the 1:14:00 mark on the audio), Judge Niemeyer asked counsel whether Baltimore had any evidence that the clinics regulated by the ordinance “have advertised that they do provide abortions, falsely.” She responded “yes,” pointing to the Option Line advertisement. The argument continued:

Q (Niemeyer): What does it say, it says, “we provide abortion”?

A (Counsel): It says we provide medical services, quote, and then it also, quote, abortion and morning-after pill. . . .

* * *

Q (Wilkinson): That’s false advertising, isn’t it? It can be addressed in a variety of ways . . .

A (Counsel): It’s false. It is. . . .

As I’ve previously observed, the drift of this argument seemed to be that the case would be sent back for more discovery. If that happens, I would be surprised if Baltimore is able to show that any of the clinics regulated by their ordinance “have advertised that they do provide abortions, falsely.” As I read it, and as I suspect most other fair-minded readers would read it as well, the advertisement featured by counsel for Baltimore at oral argument does nothing of the sort.

In light of all this, it will be interesting, regardless of the outcome, to see what use the judges of the Fourth Circuit make of the record that is already before them.

[UPDATE: The companion case from Montgomery County has gone through discovery, although that record is not before the Fourth Circuit at this time. A link to the plaintiff’s memorandum of law in support of summary judgment, which contains a discussion of the evidence in that case, is in the post above.]

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Report from en banc Fourth Circuit oral argument in pregnancy center compelled speech cases

This morning’s lively en banc proceedings at the Fourth Circuit in abortion-counseling-related First Amendment challenges did not produce clear signs of a winner, but raised questions (at least in my mind) about what legal issues the court took the cases en banc to address. There was virtually no discussion of commercial speech doctrine, and no judge or set of judges developed a line of questioning that would seemingly lay the foundation to displace strict scrutiny as the appropriate standard of review. That said, oral argument reveals only so much. After all, the panel dissent in one of the cases contained an analysis of commercial speech that was surprisingly detailed in light of the dissenting judge’s failure to lay the predicates for that analysis in oral argument before the panel. It is possible that something similar could happen here–though it is much harder to make that kind of move when writing for a number of judges rather than just for oneself.

The en banc court heard back-to-back oral arguments in First Amendment challenges to Baltimore and Montgomery County (MD) ordinances requiring certain pregnancy counselors to post signs about the limited nature of the services that they offer. The court’s decision to take these cases en banc vacated panel decisions that granted First Amendment victories to the challengers. (For my earlier coverage of the panel decisions, see here; for my earlier coverage of the oral argument to the panel, see here.) Judge Niemeyer authored those vacated panel decisions, which Judge Agee joined, while Judge King dissented. That configuration of a Niemeyer majority with a King dissent produced back-to-back en banc arguments earlier this year in cases involving the liability of military contractors for activities at Abu Ghraib and other locations in the Iraq war zone. Those arguments resulted in procedural holdings about the lack of appellate court jurisdiction rather than definitive merits rulings. Something similarly limited with respect to the merits may result from this morning’s arguments as well.

As the panel dissenter, Judge King was one of the most vocal questioners at oral argument in both cases. In the Baltimore case, Judge King (along with a few other judges) emphasized the need for more discovery and a better developed record. Given the substance of his dissent in the Baltimore case and the tenor of questioning by other judges, my best guess is that the en banc court will vacate the district court decision in the Baltimore case and remand for further development of the underlying facts. That is not to say I think that is the best decision, only that I think it the most likely decision in light of the limited information revealed at oral argument.

In the Montgomery County case, Judge King returned repeatedly to the “abuse of discretion” standard for appellate review of a decision to grant or deny a preliminary injunction. Even when counsel for Montgomery County correctly noted (against interest) that legal issues were to be reviewed de novo within the context of the abuse of discretion standard for the ultimate decision to grant or deny, Judge King continued to highlight the abuse of discretion standard. Some of Judge King’s questions dovetailed in some respects with Judge Wilkinson’s repeated invocations of “balance” in First Amendment analysis. These emphases, together with some other indicators from oral argument, may suggest a narrow affirmance of Judge Chasanow’s decision. That decision identified a difference between the two sentences that the ordinance compelled centers to include on their signs, and split the difference between the two. Judge Chasanow upheld the portion of the ordinance requiring centers to state that they do not have a licensed medical professional staff, but enjoined the requirement to state that the Montgomery County Health Officer encourages women who are or may be pregnant to consult with a licensed health care provider. Judge Wilkinson thought this split-the-difference approach was a sensible balance, and he may not have been alone in that view.

While I have more confidence with respect to the guess about the Baltimore case than the Montgomery County case, I do not have a high level of confidence in either guess. The military contractor en banc cases earlier this year provided much clearer indications of where the center of gravity was on the court at the time of argument. By contrast, there were a number of cross-cutting issues and interventions in these argument.  During portions of the second argument, for example, Judge Gregory and Judge Motz seemed more skeptical of Montgomery County’s ordinance than Judge Wilkinson, who in turn seemed more speech-protective than some of the other judges during argument of the Baltimore case.

Because both of these appeals addressed the issuance of a preliminary injunction, the merits issue of the constitutionality of both ordinances was one step removed from straight-up consideration by the court. Issuance of a preliminary injunction depends on a court’s assessment of the moving party’s likelihood of success on the merits. This is a predictive judgment. If the Fourth Circuit were to hold that the district court in the Baltimore case should not have found a likelihood of success on the merits without allowing for further factual development, while the district court in the Montgomery County case made a reasonable split assessment of the movant’s likelihood of success in that case, that would still leave open the possibility that both ordinances could be completely enjoined down the road.

In my view, that would be the correct ultimate outcome in both cases. The reason for this assessment is the First Amendment standard of review. Both district courts, as well as all three judges on the original panel, thought that strict scrutiny was the appropriate merits standard of review for the preliminary injunction in the Montgomery County case. They were right. Judge King thought that discovery would have helped clarify the appropriate standard of review in the Baltimore case. He argued that Baltimore might have been able to develop evidence to show that the Baltimore ordinance regulated commercial speech. In my view, this argument is based on legal error.

At least as far as the questioning at today’s oral arguments is concerned, the possibility that commercial speech doctrine should apply on remand is the dog that didn’t bark. The qualifier “at least as far as the questioning reveals” is an important one. While Judge King’s questioning at the panel argument was largely favorable to the City, Judge King did not develop lines of questioning to support the analysis that his dissenting opinion ultimately contained. Perhaps a narrow procedural holding would be just an opening move in a push to ultimately apply the standard of review appropriate to regulations of commercial speech. If there is support for that kind of change in the doctrine, it was not revealed at oral arguments today. That is not to say that it did not exist, only that the arguments provided no evidence of the existence of such support. After this morning’s arguments, it remains difficult to see how either Baltimore or Montgomery County can avoid the application of strict scrutiny under First Amendment doctrine as it currently stands.

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What explains today’s unanimous Supreme Court decision overturning the Fourth Circuit on attorney’s fees?

The Supreme Court today unanimously overturned a Fourth Circuit decision that affirmed the denial of attorneys’ fees in a civil rights case. The Court in Lefemine v. Wideman vacated a Fourth Circuit decision that affirmed the denial of “prevailing party” attorney’s fees to a plaintiff who had secured declaratory and injunctive relief but no money damages.

Unanimous summary decisions like this one are a problem for any inferior court. Yet some courts deciding some issues seem more likely to result in such decisions (such as the Sixth Circuit operating under AEDPA or the Ninth Circuit examining qualified immunity). The Fourth Circuit has generally steered clear of this kind of unanimous overturning. What happened here?

It looks like the Fourth Circuit panel simply misapplied Supreme Court precedent, in large part because of an earlier circuit precedent (from 1993) that also (but without correction) misapplied Supreme Court precedent.

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Pregnancy centers win free speech victories over Baltimore and Montgomery County in Fourth Circuit

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.

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One for the dogs: Fourth Circuit issues First Amendment decision about doggy daycare mural

The Fourth Circuit today affirmed the dismissal of a First Amendment challenge to Arlington, Virginia’s prohibition of a doggy daycare’s mural near the Shirlington Dog Park. Judge Diaz wrote the opinion for the Court in Wag More Dogs, LLC v. Cozart, which was joined in by Judge Duncan and Judge Keenan. The challenger was represented by the Institute for Justice, which has a case page with background and more information, together with a response to today’s decision.

My preliminary reaction is that the opinion’s First Amendment analysis is overly deferential to the government. In assessing whether the challenged sign ordinance is content-based or content-neutral, the opinion follows the regrettable path of focusing almost exclusively on whether the ordinance was enacted because of disagreement with the message conveyed. The most underdeveloped part of the opinion, however, is its application of intermediate scrutiny, particularly the narrow tailoring prong. The county asserted that its ordinance serves two interests: promoting traffic safety and enhancing the County’s aesthetics. The county’s enforcement of its ordinance with respect to the challenged mural raises serious questions about how the ordinance is “narrowly tailored” to serve these interests, questions that the opinion simply does not address. The county told Wag More Dogs that the mural would not run afoul of the ordinance if (1) it depicted anything other than pictures relating to the doggy daycare business, or (2) it included the phrase “Welcome to Shirlington Park’s Community Canine Area.” Given the conceded lawfulness of hypothetical alternative murals that comply with either (1) or (2), it is hard to see how the ordinance is tailored at all, much less narrowly tailored, to the promotion of traffic safety or the enhancement of the County’s aesthetics. Instead of examining this issue, however, the opinion conclusorily asserts that the ordinance’s sign and location restrictions do no more than eliminate the exact source of the evil it sought to remedy.

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Report from oral argument in Fourth Circuit appeals of First Amendment wins by pregnancy resource centers in Maryland

A Fourth Circuit panel consisting of Judge Niemeyer, Judge King, and Judge Agee heard oral arguments yesterday in two First Amendment challenges brought by pregnancy resource centers in Maryland. I attended both arguments. From the content and tenor of the proceedings, it seems very likely that the court will affirm the two district courts whose rulings were at issue, both of which held that ordinances compelling speech by pregnancy resource centers violate the First Amendment.

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White, supremacist, loses true threats argument about Black in Fourth Circuit

A split panel of the Fourth Circuit today affirmed the conviction of William White, the white supremacist “Commander” of the American National Socialist Workers’ Party, for threatening to injure or intimidate in violation of federal law. Judge Niemeyer wrote the opinion for the court in United States v. White. Judge Duncan joined in Judge Niemeyer’s opinion for the court and also authored a separate concurrence. Judge Floyd dissented.

The principal issue in the appeal is the appropriate mens rea for a “true threat” not entitled to First Amendment protection. White urged the Fourth Circuit to follow the Ninth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Cassel, 408 F.3d 622 (9th Cir. 2005), by adopting a specific-intent-to-threaten requirement. The Fourth Circuit held that prior circuit precedent foreclosed that approach, and the Supreme Court’s decision in Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343 (2003), was not a superseding contrary decision that required reexamination of circuit precedent.

The opinions feature extensive First Amendment analysis and include citations not only Supreme Court and Circuit Court of Appeals decisions, but also a student law review note, an article by Eugene Volokh, and an article by Frederick Schauer, among other authorities.

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Occupy Richmond amounts to ongoing, not anticipated, civil disobedience

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on an awkward encounter today between Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones and various occupiers at Kanawha Plaza in downtown Richmond. Earlier in the day, Jimmy Barrett of WRVA interviewed William & Mary law professor Timothy Zick about the legal rights of the city vis-a-vis the occupiers. Bottom line: The occupiers are breaking the law and Richmond has the legitimate authority to enforce the law by removing the occupiers.

The legal analysis is not particularly difficult. The city’s ban on overnight camping in public parks is a content-neutral time-place-manner restriction that leaves open ample alternative means of communication.

The protesters obviously seek to occupy the moral high ground vis-a-vis Wall Street and plutocrats and the like, but they also appear to wish to occupy the moral high ground with respect to the law governing use of the city parks. That seems like a more difficult task.

According to the Times-Dispatch story linked above, “[occupier] Kadrich said that the occupiers were ‘following all legislation that we term to be wholly just.’ He added that if given an ultimatum to leave the plaza by a certain date, many protesters may exercise ‘civil disobedience.'” Yet the protesters already are engaged in civil disobedience. Regardless of whether the city forces the issue, they are in violation of a valid law.

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Unusually Split Fourth Circuit Finds Establishment Clause Violation in Forsyth (NC) County’s Legislative Prayer Policy

When it comes to interpreting the Constitution on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Judge Wilkinson and Judge Niemeyer do not often engage in such sharply divergent analyses as are apparent in today’s opinions in Joyner v. Forsyth County. At issue is the constitutionality under the Establishment Clause of the prayer policy of the Forsyth (NC) County Board of Commissioners, as implemented during 2007 and 2008. In an opinion authored by Judge Wilkinson and joined by Judge Keenan, the Fourth Circuit finds that Forsyth County has violated the Establishment Clause. Judge Niemeyer dissents.

Snippets from the majority opinion after the jump. Portions of the dissent and issue analysis in later posts.

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Fourth Circuit Rejects High School Charm Queen’s Free Speech and Due Process Challenge to Suspension for MySpace Page Created at Home

The Fourth Circuit affirmed the denial of relief to a student alleging that punishment imposed by school officials for her internet speech violated various provisions of the Constitution. Judge Niemeyer wrote the opinion in Kowalski v. Berkeley County Schools, which was joined by Judges Duncan and Agee.

Summary and snippets after the jump.

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