Opinion

Carey v. Brown

  • 447 U.S. 455
  • 100 S. Ct. 2286
  • 65 L. Ed. 2d 263
  • 1980 U.S. LEXIS 118
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Filed
Jun 20, 1980
Status
Published
Author
Stewart
On the bench
Brennan, Stewart, White, Marshall, Powell, Stevens, Rehnquist, Burger, Blackmun
Cited by
828 cases
Authority
More cited than 24.1%

stating that “[w]hen government regulation discriminates among speech-related activities in a public forum, the Equal Protection Clause mandates that the legislation be finely tailored to serve substantial state interests, and the justifications offered for any distinctions it draws must be carefully scrutinized”

How later courts described this case

  • stating that “[w]hen government regulation discriminates among speech-related activities in a public forum, the Equal Protection Clause mandates that the legislation be finely tailored to serve substantial state interests, and the justifications offered for any distinctions it draws must be carefully scrutinized”
  • finding that the Constitution does not leave state officials "powerless to pass laws to protect the public from . . . conduct that disturbs the tranquility of spots selected by the people . . . [for] buildings that require peace and quiet to carry out their functions, such as . . . schools"
  • finding that the State’s compelling interest in preserving privacy by banning residential picketing did not justify a selective ban on nonlabor picketing since the interest was unrelated to the labor/nonlabor distinction
  • holding that for a state to enforce a content based exclusion, it must show that its regulation is necessary to serve a compelling' state interest and that it is narrowly drawn to achieve that legitimate end

Written by the judges who cited it.

Distinguished

  • Distinguished by Bland v. Fessler, 88 F.3d 729 (1996)

    Carey is inapposite.
    Court of Appeals for the Ninth CircuitJul 2, 1996Read it
  • Distinguished by Bland v. Fessler, 79 F.3d 942 (1996)

    Carey is inapposite.
    Court of Appeals for the Ninth CircuitApr 1, 1996Read it

The opinion

Mr. Justice Stewart,

concurring.

The opinion of the Court in this case, as did the Court’s opinion in Police Department of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U. S. 92 , invokes the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as the basis of decision. But what was actually at stake in Mosley , and is at stake here, is the basic meaning of the constitutional protection of free speech:

“[W]hile a municipality may constitutionally impose reasonable time, place, and manner regulations on the *472 use of its streets and sidewalks for First Amendment purposes, and may even forbid altogether such use of some of its facilities; what a municipality may not do under the First and Fourteenth Amendments is t-o discriminate in the regulation of expression on the basis of the content of that expression.” Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U. S. 507, 520 . (Citations omitted.)

It is upon this understanding that I join the opinion and judgment of the Court.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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