514
OCTOBER TERM, 2000
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the third circuit
No. 99-1687. Argued December 5, 2000—Decided May 21, 2001*
During contentious collective-bargaining negotiations between a union representing teachers at a Pennsylvania high school and the local school board, an unidentified person intercepted and recorded a cell phone conversation between the chief union negotiator and the union president (hereinafter petitioners). After the parties accepted a nonbinding arbitration proposal generally favorable to the teachers, respondent Vopper, a radio commentator, played a tape of the intercepted conversation on his public affairs talk show in connection with news reports about the settlement. Petitioners filed this damages suit under both federal and state wiretapping laws, alleging, among other things, that their conversation had been surreptitiously intercepted by an unknown person; that respondent Yocum, the head of a local organization opposed to the union's demands, had obtained the tape and intentionally disclosed it to, inter alios, media representatives; and that they had repeatedly published the conversation even though they knew or had reason to know that it had been illegally intercepted. In ruling on cross-motions for summary judgment, the District Court concluded that, under the statutory language, an individual violates the federal Act by intentionally disclosing the contents of an electronic communication when he or she knows or has reason to know that the information was obtained through an illegal interception, even if the individual was not involved in that interception; found that the question whether the interception was intentional raised a genuine issue of material fact; and rejected respondents' defense that they were protected by the First Amendment even if the disclosures violated the statutes, finding that the statutes were content-neutral laws of general applicability containing no indicia of prior restraint or the chilling of free speech. The Third Circuit accepted an interlocutory appeal, and the United States, also a petitioner, intervened to defend the federal Act's constitutionality. Applying intermediate scrutiny, the court found the statutes invalid because they deterred significantly more speech than necessary to protect the private
*Together with No. 99-1728, United States v. Vopper, aka Williams, et al., also on certiorari to the same court.
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