Saia v. New York/Dissent Frankfurter

by Felix Frankfurter

United States Supreme Court

334 U.S. 558

Saia  v.  New York

 Argued: and Submitted March 30, 1948. --- Decided: June 7, 1948

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, with whom Mr. Justice REED and Mr. Justice BURTON concur, dissenting.

The appellant's loud speakers blared forth in a small park in a small city. ^[1] The park was about 1,600 feet long and from 250 to 400 feet wide. It was used primarily for recreation, containing benches, picnic and athletic facilities, and a children's wading pool and playground. Estimates of the range of the sound equipment varied from about 200 to 600 feet. The attention of a large fraction of the area of the park was thus commanded.

The native power of human speech can interfere little with the self-protection of those who do not wish to listen. They may easily move beyond earshot, just as those who do not choose to read need not have their attention bludgeoned by undesired reading matter. And so utterances by speech or pen can neither be forbidden nor licensed, save in the familiar classes of exceptional situations. Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 58 S.Ct. 666, 82 L.Ed. 949; Hague v. CIO, 307 U.S. 496, 59 S.Ct. 954, 83 L.Ed. 1423; Schneider v. Irvington, 308 U.S. 147, 60 S.Ct. 146, 84 L.Ed. 155; Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 62 S.Ct. 766, 86 L.Ed. 1031. But modern devices for amplifying the range and volume of the voice, or its recording, afford easy, too easy, opportunities for aural aggression. If uncontrolled, the result is intrusion into cherished privacy. The refreshment of mere silence, or meditai on, or quiet conversation, may be disturbed or precluded by noise beyond one's personal control.

Municipalities have conscientiously sought to deal with the new problems to which sound equipment has given rise and have devised various methods of control to make city life endurable. See McIntyre and Rhyne, Radio and Municipal Regulations (National Institute of Municipal Law Officers, Report No. 62, 1940) pp. 28 et seq. Surely there is not a constitutional right to force unwilling people to listen. Cf. Otto, Speech and Freedom of Speech, in Freedom and Experience (Edited by Hook and Konvitz, 1947) 78, 83 et seq. And so I cannot agree that we must deny the right of a State to control these broadcasting devices so as to safeguard the rights of others not to be assailed by intrusive noise but to be free to put their freedom of mind and attention to uses of their own choice.

Coming to the facts of the immediate situation, I cannot say that it was beyond constitutional limits to refuse a license to the appellant for the time and place requested. The State was entitled to authorize the local authorities of Lockport to determine that the well-being of those of its inhabitants who sought quiet and other pleasures that a park affords, outweighed the appellant's right to force his message upon them. Nor did it exceed the bounds of reason for the chief of police to base his decision refusing a license upon the fact that the manner in which the license had been used in the past was distructive of the enjoyment of the park by those for whom it was maintained. That people complained about an annoyance would seem to be a pretty solid basis in experience for not sanctioning its continuance.

Very different considerations come into play when the free exercise of religion is subjected to a licensing system whereby a minor official determines whether a cause is religious. This was the problem presented by Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 60 S.Ct. 900, 84 L.Ed. 1213, 128 A.L.R. 1352, and of course we held that 'Such a censorship of religion as the means of determining its right to survive is a denial of liberty protected by the First Amendment and included in the liberty which is within the protection of the Fourteenth.' 310 U.S. at 305, 60 S.Ct. at 904, 84 L.Ed. 1213, 128 A.L.R. 1352. To determine whether a cause is, or is not, 'religious' opens up too wide a field of personal judgment to be left to the mere discretion of an official. As to the allowable range of judgment regarding the scope of 'religion,' see Judge Augustus N. Hand in United States v. Kauten, 2 Cir., 133 F.2d 703, 708. The matter before us is of quite a different order. It is not unconstitutional for a State to vest in a public official the determination of what is in effect a nuisance merely because such authority may be outrageously misused by trying to stifle the expression of some undesired opinion under the meretricious cloak of a nuisance. Judicial remedies are available for such abuse of authority, and courts, including this Court, exist to enforce such remedies.

Even the power to limit the abuse of sound equipment may not be exercised with a partiality unrelated to the nuisance. But there is here no showing of either arbitrary action or discrimination. There is no basis for finding that noisemakers similar to appellant would have obtained a license for the time and place requested. Reference is found in the testimony to the use of loud-speakers for Lutheran services in a nearby ballfield. But the ballfield was outside the park in which appellant blared to his audience, and there is nothing in the record to show that the Lutherans could have used their amplifying equipment within the park, or that the appellant would have been denied permission to use such equipment in the ballfield. See Lehon v. Atlanta, 242 U.S. 53, 37 S.Ct. 70, 61 L.Ed. 145. State action cannot be found hypothetically unconstitutional. New York ex rel. Hatch v. Reardon, 204 U.S. 152, 27 S.Ct. 188, 51 L.Ed. 41, 9 Ann.Cas. 736.

The men whose labors brought forth the Constitution of the United States had the street outside Independence Hall covered with earth so that their deliberations might not be disturbed by passing traffic. Our democracy presupposes the deliberative process as a condition of thought and of responsible choice by the electorate. To the Founding Fathers it would hardly seem a proof of progress in the development of our democracy that the blare of sound trucks must be treated as a necessary medium in the deliberative process. In any event, it would startle them to learn that the manner and extent of the control of the blare of the sound trucks by the States of the Union, when such control is not arbitrarily and discriminatorily exercised, must satisfy what this Court thinks is the desirable scope and manner of exercising such control.

We are dealing with new technological devices and with attempts to control them in order to gain their benefits while maintaining the precious freedom of privacy. These attempts, being experimental, are bound to be tentative, and the views I have expressed are directed towards the circumstances of the immediate case. Suffice it to say that the limitations by New York upon the exercise of appellant's rights of utterance did not in my view exceed the accommodation between the conflicting interests which the State was here entitled to make in view of time and place and circumstances. See Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U.S. 569, 61 S.Ct. 762, 85 L.Ed. 1049, 133 A.L.R. 1396.

Notes

1. The last census gave the population of Lockport as 24,379.