Interesting indeed. I've given some thought to the question of whether courts should distinguish two cases. 1. Speakers target young children with messages (words or images) arguably relating to matters of public concern that the speaker understands will cause the child audience significant emotional distress, and 2. Speakers are communicating the same message to an adult audience but realize that an incidental consequence of doing so is that young children will be exposed to the messages and will be emotionally upset.
Any thoughts, Eugene. Alan From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Volokh, Eugene Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2013 2:54 PM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics (religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu) Subject: Injunction barring display of "gruesome images" of aborted fetuses outside a church Colleagues: I might have mentioned this case (which I'm litigating) before on the list, but now that the briefing is done I thought I'd pass along all the information about it, in case some might find it interesting. The case is Scott v. Saint John's Church in the Wilderness, in which the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld an injunction that bars my clients from (among other things) displaying "gruesome images" of aborted fetuses outside a church. The court acknowledged that this was a content-based speech restriction, but said that the injunction passed the "strict scrutiny" required for such restrictions, because it was supposedly narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest in shielding children from such speech. Our petition argues that the Supreme Court should consider the case, because lower courts disagree on whether such content-based restrictions are constitutional. The brief in opposition argued that the restriction is content-neutral, and is justified by the interest in protecting worship services (though that is not the interest the Court of Appeals relied on). There's a New York Times article today by Adam Liptak about it, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/us/church-suit-says-abortion-protest-upset-children.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&;. Here are the relevant documents (also linked to from http://www.volokh.com/2013/05/14/scott-v-saint-johns-church-in-the-wilderness-briefs/) 1. The decision below<http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2999459973173983607>. 2. The petition for certiorari<http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/scott/petition.pdf>. 3. The amicus brief of free speech scholars (Profs. Floyd Abrams, Amy Adler, Jack Balkin, Vince Blasi, David Cole, Ronald Collins, Alan Dershowitz, Norman Dorsen, Daniel Farber, Kent Greenfield, Seth Kreimer, Sanford Levinson, Robert O'Neil, Martin Redish, Suzanna Sherry, Geoffrey Stone, Nadine Strossen, Jonathan Varat, and James Weinstein)<http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/scott/amicusspeechprof.pdf>. 4. The amicus brief of Religion Clauses scholars (Salam Al-Marayti and Profs. Michael Ariens, Thomas Berg, Zachary Calo, Bob Destro, Carl Esbeck, Marie Failinger, Edward Gaffney, Richard Garnett, Douglas Kmiec, Faisal Kutty, Michael Stokes Paulsen, Michael Perry, Richard Stith, and Lynn Wardle)<http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/scott/amicusreligionprof.pdf>, written by Ed Gaffney. 5. The amicus brief of historians of art and photography (Profs. Dora Apel, Stephen Eisenman, Renée C. Hoogland, Paul Jaskot, William J. Thomas Mitchell, Terence Smith, John Tagg, and Rebecca Zorach)<http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/scott/amicusarthistoryprof.pdf>. 6. The amicus brief of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform<http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/scott/amicuscber.pdf>. 7. Respondents' Brief in Opposition<http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/scott/bio.pdf>. 8. Our Reply Brief<http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/scott/reply.pdf>. The Court has scheduled the case to be discussed at the May 30 conference. Eugene
_______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
