774
Kennedy, J., dissenting
ments of ambiguity compound the others. Finally, as we all know, the identity or enterprise of the occupants of a building which fronts on a public street is not always known to the public. Health care providers may occupy but a single office in a large building. The Colorado citizen may walk from a disfavored-speech zone to a free zone with little or no ability to discern when one ends and the other begins. The statute's vagueness thus becomes as well one source of its overbreadth. The only sure way to avoid violating the law is to refrain from picketing, leafletting, or oral advocacy altogether. Scienter cannot save so vague a statute as this.
A statute is vague when the conduct it forbids is not ascertainable. See Chicago v. Morales, 527 U. S. 41, 56 (1999). "[People] of common intelligence cannot be required to guess at the meaning of the enactment." Winters v. New York, 333 U. S. 507, 515 (1948). The terms "oral protest, education, or counseling" are at least as imprecise as criminal prohibitions on speech the Court has declared void for vagueness in past decades. In Coates v. Cincinnati, 402 U. S. 611 (1971), the Court encountered little difficulty in striking down a municipal ordinance making it a criminal offense for "three or more persons to assemble . . . on any of the sidewalks . . . and there conduct themselves in a manner annoying to persons passing by . . . ." Ibid. The Court held the ordinance to be unconstitutionally vague because "it subject[ed] the exercise of the right of assembly to an unascertainable standard, and [was] unconstitutionally broad because it authorize[d] the punishment of constitutionally protected conduct." Id., at 614. Vagueness led to over-breadth as well in Houston v. Hill, 482 U. S. 451 (1987), where the Court invalidated an ordinance making it " 'un-lawful for any person to . . . in any manner oppose . . . or interrupt any policeman in the execution of his duty.' " Id., at 455. The "sweeping" restriction, the Court reasoned, placed citizens at risk of arrest for exercising their
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