Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703, 70 (2000)

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772

HILL v. COLORADO

Kennedy, J., dissenting

broad and too narrow to serve the interests asserted by the municipality. 422 U. S., at 211-215. The law, moreover, was not analogous to the rare, "selective restrictions" on speech previously upheld to protect individual privacy. Id., at 208-209 (citing and discussing Rowan, supra, and Lehman v. Shaker Heights, 418 U. S. 298 (1974)). The Court did not, contrary to the majority's assertions, suggest that government is free to enact categorical measures restricting traditional, peaceful communications among citizens in a public forum. Instead, the Court admonished that citizens usually bear the burden of disregarding unwelcome messages. 422 U. S., at 211 (citing Cohen v. California, 403 U. S. 15, 21 (1971)).

Today's decision is an unprecedented departure from this Court's teachings respecting unpopular speech in public fora.

II

The Colorado statute offends settled First Amendment principles in another fundamental respect. It violates the constitutional prohibitions against vague or overly broad criminal statutes regulating speech. The enactment's fatal ambiguities are multiple and interact to create further imprecisions. The result is a law more vague and overly broad than any criminal statute the Court has sustained as a permissible regulation of speech. The statute's imprecisions are so evident that this, too, ought to have ended the case without further discussion.

The law makes it a criminal offense to "knowingly approach another person within eight feet of such person, unless such other person consents, for the purpose of passing a leaflet or handbill to, displaying a sign to, or engaging in oral protest, education, or counseling with such other person in the public way or sidewalk area within a radius of one hundred feet from any entrance door to a health care facility." Colo. Rev. Stat. § 18-9-122(3) (1999). The operative terms and phrases of the statute are not defined. The case comes

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