The Assault on Free Speech, Public Assembly, and Dissent

A National Lawyers Guild Report 13
our Constitution for a more restrictive view. For the
alternative would lead to standardization of ideas either
by legislatures, courts, or dominant political or
community groups. 16
In Edwards v. South Carolina, 17 the Supreme Court struck down
convictions for breaching the peace for 187 black students who
marched to the South Carolina Statehouse holding anti-segregation
signs.
<strong>The</strong> state cannot prohibit free-speech rights in public forums such as
parks and streets. But it can regulate such speech, using narrowly
drawn statutes that give limited discretion to officials to restrict
speech at particular times and places and in particular ways, as long
as the justification for such prohibition is not content-based.
Free speech can also be limited by “time, place and manner”
restrictions, as long as those restrictions are reasonable. Justifiable
regulations include requiring a permit to hold a meeting in a public
building or to conduct a demonstration that may interfere with
traffic. But restrictions that are overly burdensome violate the First
Amendment. In the 1960s officials in Southern cities frequently
required civil-rights activists to apply for demonstration permits, but
then granted or denied the permits arbitrarily. In Shuttlesworth v.
Birmingham, 18 the Supreme Court struck down such licensing
schemes as unconstitutional. <strong>The</strong> Shuttlesworth Court held, in part,
that a “law subjecting the right of free expression in publicly owned
places to the prior restraint of a license, without narrow, objective,
and definite standards is unconstitutional, and a person faced with
such a law may ignore it and exercise his First Amendment rights.” 19
Attorney General Ashcroft’s Unlawful Failure to Prosecute
Police Abuse
After passage of the Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of
1994, the Department of Justice was tasked with collecting data on
the frequency and types of abuse complaints filed nationwide. <strong>The</strong>
1994 Act included a new statute under which the DOJ may sue for
declaratory relief (a statement of the governing law) and equitable
relief (an order to abide by the law with specific instructions
describing actions that must be taken) if any governmental authority