Members of an evangelical Christian church in Hemet, California were recently arrested for reading the Bible aloud within earshot of a group of people waiting for the DMV office to open. They were charged with violation of California Penal Code section 602.1(b):
"Any person who intentionally interferes with any lawful business carried on by the employees of a public agency open to the public, by obstructing or intimidating those attempting to carry on business, or those persons there to transact business with the public agency, and who refuses to leave the premises of the public agency after being requested to leave by the office manager or a supervisor of the public agency, or by a peace officer acting at the request of the office manager or a supervisor of the public agency, is guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment in a county jail for up to 90 days, or by a fine of up to four hundred dollars ($400), or by both that imprisonment and fine."
Here is a video of the event. The justification offered by the arresting officer is that the waiting crowd was a "captive audience." As a statutory matter, one must wonder whether the activity depicted in the video amounts to obstruction or intimidation. Annoying perhaps, but obstructing? Intimidating? However, the arrested preachers have filed suit in federal court alleging that their free speech rights under the federal and California constitutions were violated. Here is the complaint. Here is a news article from the Riverside Press-Democrat. Prof. Carl Manheim of Loyola (LA) law school is quoted in the article to the effect that the complaint has little chance of success absent proof that Bible preaching was singled out for punishment. I'm not so sure about that.
The parking lot and sidewalk outside the DMV office is very likely not a public forum. Kokinda. Thus, speech may be suppressed if the suppression is reasonable, meaning that the speech is incompatible with the normal activity of a particular place at a particular time. This is a deferential standard, but one must wonder whether an annoying harangue (whether from a political candidate, a mentally disturbed person, a vendor of coffee, or a Bible reader) is incompatible with a parking lot and sidewalk outside an as yet unopened public office. Moreover, the California Constitution extends free speech protection to persons speaking on private property voluntarily opened for public access. The DMV's parking lot seems to me to be functionally identical to the public areas of the PruneYard shopping center, so the plaintiffs may have an even better constitutional case under the California Constitution.
Prof. Howard Friedman, Religion Clause blog, first posted this issue.
I think they should win on the merits of their claims. But even if they do, this case may be questionable in terms of remedies. Their real focus is on getting an injunction against future arrests of people for preaching in that space, but I am not sure they have standing to get that remedy.
Posted by: Howard Wasserman | May 02, 2011 at 01:10 PM