(1) the challenged action was in its duration too short to be fully litigated prior to its cessation or expiration, and (2) there was a reasonable expectation that the same complaining party would be subjected to the same action again.
settled practises of state officials . . . imposing sanctions or withholding benefits . . . (which) transform private predilections into compulsory rules of behavior no less than legislative pronouncements. . . .
It would be a narrow conception of jurisprudence to confine the notion of “laws” to what is found written on the statute books, and to disregard the gloss which life has written upon it. Settled state practice cannot supplant constitutional guarantees, but it can establish what is state law. The equal protection clause did not write an empty formalism into the Constitution. Deeply embedded traditional ways of carrying out state policy, such as those of which petitioner complains, are often tougher and truer law than the dead words of the written text.
Once a situs is designated a public forum, the power of government to restrict expression therein is extremely circumscribed. The paramount principal is that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content. Thus, once a forum is opened up to assembly or speaking by some groups, government may not prohibit others from assembling or speaking on the basis of what they intend to say. . . . (R) easonable regulations controlling the “time, place and manner” of expression in a public forum are permissible. . . . However, the regulations must be in furtherance of a substantial governmental interest that has no relation to the First Amendment activity involved.
Beyond question, the government may forbid all ceremonial use of the concourse or any other portion of the Pentagon. But it may not pick and choose for the purpose of selecting expressions of viewpoint pleasing to it and suppressing those that are not favored.
. . . since the City has allowed other groups to organize more traditional type parades, it can hardly be allowed to limit the plaintiff to a sidewalk procession merely because of the controversial nature of the political thoughts they propose to express.
It is settled by a long line of recent decisions of this Court that an ordinance which, like this one, makes the peaceful enjoyment of freedoms which the Constitution guarantees contingent upon the uncontrolled will of an official as by requiring a permit or license which may be granted or withheld in the discretion of an official is an unconstitutional censorship *840 or prior restraint upon the enjoyment of those freedoms.
The result we have reached is dictated by the fundamental proposition that if these civil rights are to remain vital for all, they must protect not only those society deems acceptable, but also those whose ideas it . . . rejects . . . .
End of Document | © 2024 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. |