FREEDOM OF SPEECH, ASSEMBLY, AND THE PRESS | 101trespassing, or other violations of the law, but he could not be convicted under the
city ordinance because it was overly broad and vague.^27 However, the Court has
since upheld more carefully worded bans of cross burning.^28
FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY
The Supreme Court has consistently protected the right to assemble peaceably.
Perhaps the most famous assembly case involved a neo-Nazi group that wanted to
march in a suburb of Chicago whose population of 70,000 was nearly 60 percent
Jewish. (And of those, many were Holocaust survivors.) The village passed ordi-
nances that banned the group from marching, arguing that residents would be so
upset by the Nazi marchers that they might become violent. But the lower courts
did not accept t his a rg ument , r u ling t hat if “ t he audience is so off ended by the ideas
being expressed that it becomes disorderly and attempts to silence the speaker, it is
the duty of the police to attempt to protect the speaker, not to silence his speech.”^29
Otherwise, the right to assemble would be restricted by a “heckler’s veto.” The
Court elaborated on this responsibility to protect expressions of unpopular views
by striking down another town’s ordinance that allowed it to charge a higher per-
mit fee to groups whose march would likely require more police protection.^30
While broad protection is provided for peaceable assemblies, governments
may regulate the time, manner, and place of expression as long as the regulation
does not favor certain groups or messages over others. For example, antiabortion
protesters were not allowed to picket a doctor’s home in Brookfi eld, Wisconsin.
The Court ruled that the ordinance banning all residential picketing was content
neutral and that there was a government interest in preserving the “sanctity of
the home, the one retreat to which men and women can repair to escape from the
tribulations of their daily pursuits.”^31 “Time, manner, and place” restrictions also
may be invoked for practical reasons. For example, if the Ku Klux Klan planned to
hold a march around a football stadium on the day of a game, the local city council
could deny them a permit and suggest they choose another day that would be more
convenient. The legal standard for these regulations is that they are “reasonable.”
While vague, this standard allows the courts to balance the right to assemble
against other practical considerations.
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
The task of balancing interests is central to many First Amendment cases involv-
ing the freedom of the press. The general issue here is prior restraint, the gov-
ernment’s right to prevent the media from publishing (or later, broadcasting)
something of social or political signifi cance. Prior restraint has never been clearly
defi ned by the Supreme Court, but several landmark cases have set a very high bar
for applying it.
The fi rst case, brought in the 1930s, involved a Minnesota law that banned
“obscene, lewd and lascivious” publications or “malicious, scandalous and defam-
atory” content. Under this law the state shut down a racist, bigoted publication
that railed against many groups of people. The Court subsequently struck down
the law in Near v. Minnesota, saying, “The fact that the liberty of the press may
be abused by miscreant purveyors of scandal does not make any less necessary
the immunity of the press from previous restraint.”^32 However, the Court did not
specify when prior restraint would be acceptable. Another suit, brought in 1971
and known as the Pentagon Papers case, involved disclosure of parts of a top-secret
prior restraint A limit on free-
dom of the press that allows the
government to prohibit the media
from publishing certain materials.