Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703, 56 (2000)

Page:   Index   Previous  49  50  51  52  53  54  55  56  57  58  59  60  61  62  63  Next

758

HILL v. COLORADO

Scalia, J., dissenting

Court knows it—or should. A leafletter, whether he is working on behalf of Operation Rescue, Local 109, or Bubba's Bar-B-Que, stakes out the best piece of real estate he can, and then walks a few steps toward individuals passing in his vicinity, extending his arm and making it as easy as possible for the passerby, whose natural inclination is generally not to seek out such distributions, to simply accept the offering. Few pedestrians are likely to give their "consent" to the approach of a handbiller (indeed, by the time he requested it they would likely have passed by), and even fewer are likely to walk over in order to pick up a leaflet. In the abortion context, therefore, ordinary handbilling, which we have in other contexts recognized to be a "classic for[m] of speech that lie[s] at the heart of the First Amendment," Schenck, 519 U. S., at 377, will in its most effective locations be rendered futile, the Court's implausible assertions to the contrary notwithstanding.

The Colorado provision differs in one fundamental respect from the "content-neutral" time, place, and manner restrictions the Court has previously upheld. Each of them rested upon a necessary connection between the regulated expression and the evil the challenged regulation sought to eliminate. So, for instance, in Ward v. Rock Against Racism, the Court approved the city's control over sound amplification because every occasion of amplified sound presented the evil of excessive noise and distortion disturbing the areas surrounding the public forum. The regulation we upheld in Ward, rather than "ban[ning] all concerts, or even all rock concerts, . . . instead focus[ed] on the source of the evils the city seeks to eliminate . . . and eliminates them without at the same time banning or significantly restricting a substantial quantity of speech that does not create the same evils." 491 U. S., at 799, n. 7. In Members of City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U. S. 789, 808 (1984), the Court approved a prohibition on signs attached to utility poles which "did no more than eliminate the exact source of

Page:   Index   Previous  49  50  51  52  53  54  55  56  57  58  59  60  61  62  63  Next

Last modified: October 4, 2007