stating that “[i]n a facial challenge to the over-breadth and vagueness of a law, a court’s first task is to determine whether the enactment reaches a substantial amount of constitutionally protected conduct” and if it does “[t]he court should then examine the facial vagueness challenge and, assuming the enactment implicates no constitutionally protected conduct, should uphold the challenge only if the enactment is impermissibly vague in all of. its applications”
How later courts described this case
- stating that “[i]n a facial challenge to the over-breadth and vagueness of a law, a court’s first task is to determine whether the enactment reaches a substantial amount of constitutionally protected conduct” and if it does “[t]he court should then examine the facial vagueness challenge and, assuming the enactment implicates no constitutionally protected conduct, should uphold the challenge only if the enactment is impermissibly vague in all of. its applications”
- explaining that “[a] law that does not reach constitutionally protected conduct and therefore satisfies the overbreadth test may nevertheless be challenged on its face as unduly vague, in violation of due process” and reaching merits of pre-enforcement facial vagueness challenge to town ordinance that required a business to 48 obtain a license to sell any items that were “designed or marketed for use with illegal cannabis or drugs”
- explaining that to challenge the vagueness of a law that does not reach constitutionally protected conduct, a person must first show the law is unconstitutionally vague as applied to him because a person “who engages in some -5- 04-08-00501-CR & 04-08–00502-CR conduct that is clearly proscribed cannot complain of the vagueness of the law as applied to the conduct of others”
- explaining that, if an “enactment implicates no constitutionally protected conduct,” courts should “examine the complainant’s conduct before analyzing other hypothetical applications of the law” because “[a] plaintiff who engages in some conduct that is clearly proscribed cannot complain of the vagueness of the law as applied to the conduct of others”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Islamic Society of Basking Ridge v. Township of Bernards, 226 F. Supp. 3d 320 (2016)
) Defendants do not further explain how or why Hoffman Estates is inapplicable.
Distinguished by Native American Arts, Inc. v. Village Originals, Inc., 25 F. Supp. 2d 876 (1998)
455 U.S. 489, 102 S.Ct. 1186, 71 L.Ed.2d 362 (1982), assert that the overbreadth doctrine is inapplicable to commercial speech.
The opinion
Justice White,
concurring in the judgment.
I agree that the judgment of the Court of Appeals must be reversed. I do not, however, believe it necessary to discuss the overbreadth problem in order to reach this result. The Court of Appeals held the ordinance to be void for vagueness; it did not discuss any problem of ovérbreadth. That opinion should be reversed simply because it erred in its analysis of the vagueness problem presented by the ordinance.
I agree with the majority that a facial vagueness challenge to an economic regulation must demonstrate that “the enactment is impermissibly vague in all of its applications.” Ante, at 495. I also agree with the majority’s statement that the “marketed for use” standard in the ordinance is “sufficiently clear.” There is, in my view, no need to go any further: If it *508 is “transparently clear” that some particular conduct is restricted by the ordinance, the ordinance survives a facial challenge on vagueness grounds.
Technically, overbreadth is a standing doctrine that permits parties in cases involving First Amendment challenges to government restrictions on noncommercial speech to argue that the regulation is invalid because of its effect on the First Amendment rights of others not presently before the Court. Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U. S. 601, 612-615 (1973). Whether the appellee may make use of the overbreadth doctrine depends, in the first instance, on whether or not it has a colorable claim that the ordinance infringes on constitutionally protected, noncommercial speech of others. Although appellee claims that the ordinance does have such an effect, that argument is tenuous at best and should be left to the lower courts for an initial determination.
Accordingly, I concur in the judgment reversing the decision below.