Goldman v. Reyburn | Cases | Westlaw

Plaintiff complains that, desiring to give a series of lectures in the city of Philadelphia, and having made arrangements for the occupation of the Odd Fellows' Hall for that purpose, she was prevented from exercising what she alleges to have been her right of free speech by the defendants, who are officers of the said city and entrusted with the duty of maintaining peace and order within the community. This interference she alleges to have been of a forcible character, and that it resulted in great financial loss to her, and subjected her to the necessity of canceling other and future engagements to deliver lectures in various cities in the United States. She claims that, under these circumstances, a fundamental right, namely, that of free speech, guaranteed to her under the constitution of Pennsylvania, has been interfered with and abridged.

That she was prevented from delivering the proposed lectures, or one of her proposed lectures, through the action of the defendants, is not denied. Upon the contrary, it is expressly admitted and is justified on the ground that the delivery of the contemplated lecture would, in the judgment of the defendants, have resulted in a serious breach of the peace, because of the character of the sentiments and ideas which the plaintiff intended to utter and urge upon the audiences which might have gathered for the purpose of hearing her.

So far as the case before us involves no other facts than those which have been thus stated, and, indeed, so far as the averments of the bill are concerned, there is no ground whatever upon which we could grant the injunction prayed for. With the past action of the defendants and with any injury which may have resulted to the plaintiff from such action, we are not concerned. If such action was unauthorized and illegal, the plaintiff has a right to proceed in the courts of law to recover damages for any resulting injury. Courts of equity do not grant injunctions to cure wrongs which have been already perpetrated. They can only endeavor to prevent future wrongdoing, and to enable such relief to be given, it should be averred and made to appear that action has been threatened and is likely to follow, for which there is no legal justification and which is likely to result in injury to a plaintiff. The bill *884 filed in this case contains no such averments, and for that reason alone would not sustain the prayer for relief which it contains.

Waiving for the moment, however, this technical reason why we would be obliged, upon the case as it stands, to refuse any relief to the plaintiff, we may briefly consider the question which doubtless was intended to be raised. The plaintiff bases her claim of the right to deliver the lectures which she proposes to deliver on two grounds: First, that, under the constitution of Pennsylvania, “Every citizen may freely speak, write and print on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty;” and second, that, under the fourteenth amendment of the constitution of the United States, no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” As to the first ground, we may say that the plaintiff cannot take advantage of the protection afforded by the constitution of Pennsylvania, because she is not a citizen either of Pennsylvania or of the United States. As to the second ground upon which the plaintiff bases her claim of right to deliver the proposed lectures, we may say at the outset that it does not appear that the state of Pennsylvania has attempted to discriminate against the plaintiff personally or as one of a class of persons, and thereby to deny to her or to such class “the equal protection of the laws.” Cases such as have been cited to us, wherein appear statutes or ordinances obviously intended, if not expressly stated, to operate upon a particular class of aliens or others, are of no value to determine the question before us. The question which the plaintiff would have us determine is whether or not public officers, entrusted with the preservation of the peace, acting, as we ought to presume the defendants would, in the honest exercise of their judgment, should be restrained from prohibiting the delivery of lectures which would be likely to excite public disturbances and to result in a breach of the public peace. If such public officers should attempt to interfere in such a case, their interference would be justified, not upon the ground that the person to be affected by their action was an alien or a citizen, but by the knowledge that dangerous and disturbing sentiments tending to disturb the peace would be uttered. We do not mean to say that an alien has the same or as full a right to attack the institutions of our country and to advocate the abolition of the constituted and constitutional government of the land that a citizen might have, but, so far as the case which is before us is concerned, we should regard the right of a citizen as no higher than that of an alien. The constitution of Pennsylvania, in giving the right to citizens to speak freely, confers the right subject to their being held “responsible for the abuse of that liberty.” The plaintiff is an avowed anarchist. However honest or able she may be, she does not hesitate to declare that, in her belief, all government should be abolished and that every citizen should regulate his or her own conduct according to his own views of what is right and wrong, and that force may be resorted to for the purpose of destroying government and establishing the right of individual independence from governmental control. It necessarily follows from the holding of such views that it would be regarded as the right of any individual to determine, according to his own judgment, when the time arrives for the exercise of force to accomplish the destruction of government. That the utterance of such views in the community would be likely to excite such feelings and antagonism as would result in a breach of the peace is by no means unlikely. It is not unreasonable to hold that such speech is an abuse of the liberty to speak freely on any subject. Whether it be a citizen or an alien who desires to advocate ideas which, if carried out, would naturally lead to the destruction of government, whose protection that person seeks, it would *885 seem that, in the exercise of that right of self-preservation which belongs as well to governments as to individuals, such abuse of the right of free speech might, not unreasonably or unlawfully, be prevented.

**2 That the plaintiff intended to advocate such destructive views as have been before mentioned was admitted by her when examined before us. If she avowed a purpose of delivering a lecture advocating wholesale assassination of any class of public officers or persons, we think it would hardly be questioned that the peace officers of the city would be justified in preventing the utterance of such views. We are unable to perceive that there would be any well defined line of discrimination in such a case from one in which the views would be destructive of the life of the nation.

By the laws of the United States there is a discrimination against those who are known as anarchists. The right of naturalization is forbidden to them, and, when known, they are excluded from admission into the country. If, when entering the country, they are not known to belong to that class of disturbers, and are afterwards discovered to belong to it, within a prescribed time they may be deported from the country. The ban of governmental disapproval is thus placed upon the utterance of sentiments such as the plaintiff holds and desires to advocate in public. We are asked to afford an opportunity for the proclamation and advocacy of these destructive and dangerous sentiments and to compel officers of the peace, notwithstanding they may be of the opinion that breaches of the peace would result therefrom, to abstain from interfering with the holding of public meetings for the expression of such ideas. This we do not feel called upon to do. It is a familiar principle of equity that plaintiffs cannot ask relief if they do not come into court with hands that are clean. We cannot avoid reaching the conclusion that one who openly and in advance announces the purpose of advocating such doctrines announces the purpose of advocating such doctrines and sentiments as the plaintiff avows is not within the class that can claim protection and relief from a court of equity.

In what we have said we do not regard ourselves as in any sense ignoring or limiting that right of free speech which the constitution was intended to give and protect. That right is one too sacred and fundamental to be lightly regarded or readily waived or withheld. It is, however, a right necessarily subject to limitation and restriction, arising out of its abuse in an effort to make use of it for the destruction of government or persons. It follows, therefore, from what we have thus stated, that, even if the case before us on the technical grounds before referred to were adequate for the purpose of obtaining relief against a threatened wrong, we would regard it to be our duty to refuse an injunction in the case.

The injunction prayed for is refused.