COM 0966.006 1996-1998 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

i 4 Hawai' i County Council November 18, 1998 page 2 occupant to a public parking space." These restrictions are clearly content-based in that they seek to regulate the speaker's message. Content-based restrictions very seldom withstand constitutional scrutiny. It is doubtful that the courts will find that the County has a compelling reason to regulate the content of a person's speech in these situations. Even if Bill 286 is not an unconstitutional content-based regulation, it is still not a reasonable content-neutral time, place, manner regulation of speech in a public forum. For a content-neutral regulation of free speech to survive judicial scrutiny, the regulation must: (1) be narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest; and (2) leave ample alternatives for communication. Bill 286 is not narrowly tailored to serve significant government interests. The bill is not necessary to protect people from harassment, intimidation or assaults. Protecting the public from intimidation, threats, or coercion simply does not require that a form of speech, which is of crucial importance to those that express the speech, be precluded. Any of the acts of coercing, threatening, or intimidating, if clearly defined, may be constitutionally prohibited by the state via a statue that does not limit the freedom of speech of some citizens. Blair v. Shanahan, 775 F. Supp. 1315, 1324 (N.D. Cal. 1991). Hawaii already has laws to stop people from engaging in dangerous, harassing and abusive behavior. Harassment, engaging in threatening behavior (including being unreasonably loud), intimidation, stalking and terroristic threatening are all prohibited under current law.' The existence of these readily available statues for dealing with the "evils" feared by the County means that the ordinance at issue here is not narrowly tailored to meet government interests. It is clear that Bill 286 suffers from many constitutional infirmities and will have difficulty passing judicial review. The ACLU opposes the passage of Bill 286. While the ACLU understands the Hawaii County Council's need to protect Hilo citizens from abusive behavior, this bill does not achieve that end and hurts a segment of the population that is already in severe distress. In these trying economic times, we should not seek to compound the suffering of those less fortunate. If indeed solicitors are engaging in assaultive or harassing behavior, there are already laws to prevent such acts. Let us not abuse our good fortune and positions of authority to cause additional suffering on the most impoverished in our community. ' Chapter 711 (Offenses Against Public Order) of the Hawai' i Revised Statutes prohibits disorderly conduct, obstructing, harassment and harassment by stalking. Chapter 709 (Offenses Against the Person) prohibits assaults and terroristic threatening.