Parties: Saia v. New York
Date: 1948-06-07
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Paragraph: 5 - The right to be heard is placed in the uncontrolled discretion of the Chief of Police. He stands athwart the channels of communication as an obstruction which can be removed only after criminal trial and conviction and lengthy appeal. A more effective previous restraint is difficult to imagine. Unless we are to retreat from the firm positions we have taken in the past, we must give freedom of speech in this case the same preferred treatment that we gave freedom of religion in the Cantwell case, freedom of the press in the Griffin case, and freedom of speech and assembly in the Hague case.
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Paragraph: 14 - N29* Surely there is not a constitutional right to force unwilling people to listen. Cf. Otto, Speech and Freedom of Speech, in Freedom and Experience (Edited by Hook and Konvitz, 1947) 78, 83 et seq. And so I cannot agree that we must deny the right of a State to control these broadcasting devices so as to safeguard the rights of others not to be assailed by intrusive noise but to be free to put their freedom of mind and attention to uses of their own choice.
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Phrase match: and Freedom of Speech, in Freedom
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Paragraph: 19 - N30* "We are dealing with new technological devices and with attempts to control them in order to gain their benefits while maintaining the precious freedom of privacy. These attempts, being experimental, are bound to be tentative, and the views I have expressed are directed towards the circumstances of the immediate case. Suffice it to say that the limitations by New York upon the exercise of appellant's rights of utterance did not in my view exceed the accommodation between the conflicting interests which the State was here entitled to make in view of time and place and circumstances.
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Paragraph: 14 - And so I cannot agree that we must deny the right of a State to control these broadcasting devices so as to safeguard the rights of others not to be assailed by intrusive noise but to be free to put their freedom of mind and attention to uses of their own choice.
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Paragraph: 3 - We hold that § 3 of this ordinance is unconstitutional on its face, for it establishes a previous restraint on the right of free speech in violation of the First Amendment which is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against State action. To use a loud-speaker or amplifier one has to get a permit from the Chief of Police. There are no standards prescribed for the exercise of his discretion.
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Paragraph: 5 - The present ordinance has the same defects. N27* The right to be heard is placed in the uncontrolled discretion of the Chief of Police. He stands athwart the channels of communication as an obstruction which can be removed only after criminal trial and conviction and lengthy appeal. A more effective previous restraint is difficult to imagine. Unless we are to retreat from the firm positions we have taken in the past, we must give freedom of speech in this case the same preferred treatment that we gave freedom of religion in the Cantwell case, freedom of the press in the Griffin case, and freedom of speech and assembly in the Hague case.
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Paragraph: 14 - Surely there is not a constitutional right to force unwilling people to listen. Cf. Otto, Speech and Freedom of Speech, in Freedom and Experience (Edited by Hook and Konvitz, 1947) 78, 83 et seq. And so I cannot agree that we must deny the right of a State to control these broadcasting devices so as to safeguard the rights of others not to be assailed by intrusive noise but to be free to put their freedom of mind and attention to uses of their own choice.
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Phrase match: constitutional right to force unwilling people
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Paragraph: 15 - I cannot say that it was beyond constitutional limits to refuse a license to the appellant for the time and place requested. The State was entitled to authorize the local authorities of Lockport to determine that the well-being of those of its inhabitants who sought quiet and other pleasures that a park affords, outweighed the appellant's right to force his message upon them. Nor did it exceed the bounds of reason for the chief of police to base his decision refusing a license upon the fact that the manner in which the license had been used in the past was distructive of the enjoyment of the park by those for whom it was maintained. That people complained about an annoyance would seem to be a pretty solid basis in experience for not sanctioning its continuance.
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Phrase match: s right to force his message
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Paragraph: 23 - The appellant, one of Jehovah's Witnesses, contends, and the Court holds, that without the permission required by city ordinance he may set up a sound truck so as to flood this area with amplified lectures on religious subjects. It must be remembered that he demands even more than the right to speak and hold a meeting in this area which is reserved for other and quite inconsistent purposes. He located his car, on which loud-speakers were mounted, either in the park itself, not open to vehicles, or in the street close by. The microphone for the speaker was located some little distance from the car and in the park, and electric wires were strung, in one or more instances apparently across the sidewalk, from the one to the other. So that what the Court is holding, is that the Constitution of the United States forbids a city to require a permit for a private person to erect, in its streets, parks and public places, a temporary public address system, which certainly has potentialities of annoyance and even injury to park patrons if carelessly handled. It was for setting up this system of microphone, wires and sound truck without a permit, that this appellant was convicted—it was not for speaking.
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Paragraph: 25 - To my mind this is not a free speech issue. Lockport has in no way denied or restricted the free use, even in its park, of all of the facilities for speech with which nature has endowed the appeliant. It has not even interfered with his inviting an assemblage in a park space not set aside for that purpose. But can it be that society has no control of apparatus which, when put to unregulated proselyting, propaganda and commercial uses, can render life unbearable? It is intimated that the City can control the decibels; if so, why may it not prescribe zero decibels as appropriate to some places? It seems to me that society has the right to control, as to place, time and volume, the use of loud-speaking devices for any purpose, provided its regulations are not unduly arbitrary, capricious or discriminatory.
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Paragraph: 6 - N13* Loud-speakers are today indispensable instruments of effective public speech. The sound truck has become an accepted method of political campaigning. It is the way people are reached.
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Paragraph: 13 - And so utterances by speech or pen can neither be forbidden nor licensed, save in the familiar classes of exceptional situations. Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 58 S.Ct. 666, 82 L.Ed. 949; Hague v. CIO, 307 U.S. 496, 59 S.Ct. 954, 83 L.Ed. 1423; Schneider v. Irvington, 308 U.S. 147, 60 S.Ct. 146, 84 L.Ed. 155; Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 62 S.Ct. 766, 86 L.Ed. 1031. But modern devices for amplifying the range and volume of the voice, or its recording, afford easy, too easy, opportunities for aural aggression. If uncontrolled, the result is intrusion into cherished privacy. The refreshment of mere silence, or meditaiton, or quiet conversation, may be disturbed or precluded by noise beyond one's personal control.
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Paragraph: 14 - N14* Surely there is not a constitutional right to force unwilling people to listen. Cf. Otto, Speech and Freedom of Speech, in Freedom and Experience (Edited by Hook and Konvitz, 1947) 78, 83 et seq. And so I cannot agree that we must deny the right of a State to control these broadcasting devices so as to safeguard the rights of others not to be assailed by intrusive noise but to be free to put their freedom of mind and attention to uses of their own choice.
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Paragraph: 25 - It treats the issue only as one of free speech. To my mind this is not a free speech issue. Lockport has in no way denied or restricted the free use, even in its park, of all of the facilities for speech with which nature has endowed the appeliant. It has not even interfered with his inviting an assemblage in a park space not set aside for that purpose. But can it be that society has no control of apparatus which, when put to unregulated proselyting, propaganda and commercial uses, can render life unbearable? It is intimated that the City can control the decibels; if so, why may it not prescribe zero decibels as appropriate to some places? It seems to me that society has the right to control, as to place, time and volume, the use of loud-speaking devices for any purpose, provided its regulations are not unduly arbitrary, capricious or discriminatory.
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Phrase match: of free speech. To my mind
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Paragraph: 8 - N11* Any abuses which loud-speakers create can be controlled by narrowly drawn statutes. When a city allows an official to ban them in his uncontrolled discretion, it sanctions a device for suppression of free communication of ideas. In this case a permit is denied because some persons were said to have found the sound annoying. In the next one a permit may be denied because some people find the ideas annoying. Annoyance at ideas can be cloaked in annoyance at sound. The power of censorship inherent in this type of ordinance reveals its vice.
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Paragraph: 4 - That ordinance, like the present one, was dressed in the garb of the control of a 'nuisance.' But the Court made short shrift of the argument, saying that approval of the licensing system would institute censorship 'in its baldest form.' In Hague v. C.I.O., supra, we struck down a city ordinance which required a license from a local official for a public assembly on the streets or highways or in the public parks or public buildings. The official was empowered to refuse the permit if in his opinion the refusal would prevent 'riots, disturbances or disorderly assemblage.' We held that the ordinance was void on its face because it could be made N10* 'the instrument of arbitrary suppression of free expression of views on national affairs.'
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Paragraph: 3 - N5* We hold that § 3 of this ordinance is unconstitutional on its face, for it establishes a previous restraint on the right of free speech in violation of the First Amendment which is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against State action. To use a loud-speaker or amplifier one has to get a permit from the Chief of Police. There are no standards prescribed for the exercise of his discretion. The statute is not narrowly drawn to regulate the hours or places of use of loud-speakers, or the volume of sound (the decibels) to which they must be adjusted. The ordinance therefore has all the vices of the ones which we struck down in Cantwell v. Connecticut
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