Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe

Last updated
Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe
Seal of the United States Supreme Court.svg
Argued January 20, 1971
Decided May 17, 1971
Full case nameOrganization for a Better Austin, et al. v. Keefe
Citations402 U.S. 415 ( more )
91 S. Ct. 1575; 29 L. Ed. 2d 1; 1971 U.S. LEXIS 44; 1 Media L. Rep. 1021
Prior history Certiorari to the Appellate Court of Illinois, First District
Holding
Courts cannot prohibit peaceful distribution of pamphlets, unless a heavy burden is met to justify prior restraint.
Court membership
Chief Justice
Warren E. Burger
Associate Justices
Hugo Black  · William O. Douglas
John M. Harlan II  · William J. Brennan Jr.
Potter Stewart  · Byron White
Thurgood Marshall  · Harry Blackmun
Case opinions
MajorityBurger, joined by Black, Douglas, Brennan, Stewart, White, Marshall, Blackmun
DissentHarlan
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amends. I, XIV

Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe, 402 U.S. 415 (1971), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that courts cannot prohibit peaceful distribution of pamphlets, unless a heavy burden is met to justify prior restraint.

Supreme Court of the United States Highest court in the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. Established pursuant to Article III of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, it has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, including suits between two or more states and those involving ambassadors. It also has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all federal court and state court cases that involve a point of federal constitutional or statutory law. The Court has the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution or an executive act for being unlawful. However, it may act only within the context of a case in an area of law over which it has jurisdiction. The court may decide cases having political overtones, but it has ruled that it does not have power to decide nonjusticiable political questions.

Contents

Background

Keefe, a real estate broker, worked in the Chicago neighborhood of Austin. Keefe soon garnered a reputation for his business practices, which were considered to be inflammatory and controversial. Among the asserted practices was that Keefe attempted to generate sales by panicking white homeowners into selling at below-market prices by suggesting that African Americans would soon be living nearby, then selling the houses to African Americans at market value or higher (a practice known as blockbusting).

Austin, Chicago Community area in Illinois, United States

Austin is one of seventy-seven officially designated community areas in Chicago, Illinois. Located on the city's West Side, it is the second largest community area by population and the second-largest geographically. Austin's eastern boundary is the Belt Railway located just east of Cicero Avenue. Its northernmost border is the Milwaukee District / West Line. Its southernmost border is at Roosevelt Road from the Belt Railway west to Austin Boulevard. The northernmost portion, north of North Avenue, extends west to Harlem Avenue, abutting Elmwood Park. In addition to Elmwood Park, Austin also borders the suburbs of Cicero and Oak Park.

Blockbusting

Blockbusting is a business process of U.S. real estate agents and building developers to convince white property owners to sell their house at low prices, which they do by promoting fear in those house owners that racial minorities will soon be moving into the neighborhood. The agents then sell those same houses at much higher prices to black families desperate to escape the overcrowded ghettos. Blockbusting became possible after the legislative and judicial dismantling of legally protected racially segregated real estate practices after World War II. By the 1980s it largely disappeared as a business practice, after changes in law and the real estate market.

Some residents of Austin, including the Organization for a Better Austin (OBA), attempted to coerce Keefe to change his tactics by distributing flyers in the town of Westchester, where Keefe resided. Keefe sued, and obtained an injunction preventing the OBA from distributing flyers in Keefe's neighborhood. The OBA argued that their pamphlets were merely informational, but Keefe argued that they were invasions of privacy, and were intimidating.

Westchester, Illinois Village in Illinois, United States

Westchester is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is a western suburb of Chicago. The population was 16,718 at the 2010 census. The current Village President is Paul Gattusois.

The Illinois Appellate Court upheld the injunction (115 Ill.App.2d 236, 253 N.E.2d 76).

Opinion of the Court

The Supreme Court, in an 8 to 1 decision, overturned the injunction. The court ruled that peaceful distribution of pamphlets is an important aspect of the First Amendment freedom of speech, and that prior restraint of such peaceful speech requires a very compelling reason.

Prior restraint is censorship imposed, usually by a government or institution, on expression, that prohibits particular instances of expression. It is in contrast to censorship which establishes general subject matter restrictions and reviews a particular instance of expression only after the expression has taken place.

Justice Harlan dissented solely on the basis that the injunction did not constitute a "final decision" from which an appeal could be taken, and that the Court thus lacked jurisdiction.

See also

<i>United States Reports</i> official record of the rulings, orders, case tables, and other proceedings of the Supreme Court of the United States

The United States Reports are the official record of the rulings, orders, case tables, in alphabetical order both by the name of the petitioner and by the name of the respondent, and other proceedings of the Supreme Court of the United States. United States Reports, once printed and bound, are the final version of court opinions and cannot be changed. Opinions of the court in each case are prepended with a headnote prepared by the Reporter of Decisions, and any concurring or dissenting opinions are published sequentially. The Court's Publication Office oversees the binding and publication of the volumes of United States Reports, although the actual printing, binding, and publication are performed by private firms under contract with the United States Government Publishing Office.

Related Research Articles

New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the First Amendment. The ruling made it possible for The New York Times and The Washington Post newspapers to publish the then-classified Pentagon Papers without risk of government censorship or punishment.

Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously ruled that anti-indecency provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) violated the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. Two Justices concurred in part and dissented in part to the decision. This was the first major Supreme Court ruling on the regulation of materials distributed via the Internet.

Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931), is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision that found that prior restraints on publication violate freedom of the press as protected under the First Amendment, a principle that was applied to free speech generally in subsequent jurisprudence. The Court ruled that a Minnesota law that targeted publishers of "malicious" or "scandalous" newspapers violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Legal scholar and columnist Anthony Lewis called Near the Court's "first great press case".

Resale price maintenance (RPM) (US) or retail price maintenance (UK) is the practice whereby a manufacturer and its distributors agree that the distributors will sell the manufacturer's product at certain prices, at or above a price floor or at or below a price ceiling. If a reseller refuses to maintain prices, either openly or covertly, the manufacturer may stop doing business with it.

Tory v. Cochran, 544 U.S. 734 (2005), is a United States Supreme Court case involving libel.

Scheidler v. National Organization for Women, 547 U.S. 9 (2006), was a lengthy and high-profile U.S. legal case interpreting and applying the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO): a law originally drafted to combat the mafia and organized crime, the Hobbs Act: an anti-extortion law prohibiting interference with commerce by violence or threat of violence, and the Travel Act: a law prohibiting interstate travel in support of racketeering.

Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 535 U.S. 564 (2002), was a 2002 United States Supreme Court case involving the American Civil Liberties Union and the United States government regarding the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). The unconstitutionality of the law was ultimately upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, while earlier injunctions against the law by that same court were at first dismissed by but later upheld by the Supreme Court. Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002) dealt with a similar law, the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 (CPPA).

In United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, 532 U.S. 483 (2001), the United States Supreme Court rejected the common-law medical necessity defense to crimes enacted under the federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970, regardless of their legal status under the laws of states such as California that recognize a medical use for marijuana. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative was represented by Gerald Uelmen.

National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43 (1977), arising out of what is sometimes referred to as the Skokie Affair, is a United States Supreme Court case dealing with freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. This case is considered a "'classic' free speech case" in Constitutional law classes. Related court decisions are captioned Skokie v. NSPA, Collin v. Smith, and Smith v. Collin. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4, per curiam. The Supreme Court's 1977 ruling granted certiorari and reversed and remanded the Illinois Supreme Court's denial to lift the lower court's injunction on the NSPA's march. In other words, the Courts decided a person's assertion their speech is being restrained must be reviewed immediately by the judiciary. By requiring the state court to consider the neo-Nazis' appeal without delay, the U.S. Supreme Court decision opened the door to allowing the National Socialist Party of America to march.

Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105 (1943), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that an ordinance requiring door-to-door salespersons ("solicitors") to purchase a license was an unconstitutional tax on religious exercise.

Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703 (2000), was a United States Supreme Court decision. The Court ruled 6–3 that the First Amendment right to free speech was not violated by a Colorado law limiting protest, education, distribution of literature, or counseling within eight feet of a person entering a healthcare facility.

Georgia v. Brailsford, 2 U.S. 415 (1793), was a United States Supreme Court case continuing the case of Georgia v. Brailsford (1792). Here, the court held that "upon a motion to dissolve that injunction, this court held that, if the state of Georgia had the title in the debt, she had an adequate remedy at law by action upon the bond; but, in order that the money might be kept for the party to whom it belonged, ordered the injunction to be continued till the next term, and, if Georgia should not then have instituted her action at common law, to be dissolved."

<i>DVD Copy Control Assn, Inc. v. Bunner</i>

DVD Copy Control Association, Inc. v. Bunner was a lawsuit that was filed by the DVD Copy Control Association in California, accusing Andrew Bunner and several others of misappropriation of trade secrets under California's implementation of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. The case went through several rounds of appeals and was last heard and decided in February 2004 by the California Court of Appeal for the Sixth District.

Nitke v. Gonzalez, 413 F.Supp.2d 262 was a United States District Court for the Southern District of New York case regarding obscene materials published online. The plaintiff challenged the constitutionality of the obscenity provision of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). She claimed that it was overbroad when applied in the context of the Internet because certain contents deemed lawful in some communities and unlawful in others will be restricted due to the open access of the Internet. The plaintiff also sought a permanent injunction against the enforcement of the obscenity provision of the CDA. The court concluded that insufficient evidence was presented to show there was substantial variation in community standards, as applied in the "Miller test", and to show how much protected speech would actually be impaired because of these differences. The relief sought was denied, and the court ruled for the defendant. The Supreme Court subsequently affirmed this ruling without comment.

NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, 468 U.S. 85 (1984), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) television plan violated the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts. These antitrust laws were designed to prohibit group actions that restrained open competition and trade.

Marcus v. Search Warrant, 367 U.S. 717 (1961), full title Marcus v. Search Warrant of Property at 104 East Tenth Street, Kansas City, Missouri, is an in rem case decided by the United States Supreme Court on the seizure of obscene materials. The Court unanimously overturned a Missouri Supreme Court decision upholding the forfeiture of hundreds of magazines confiscated from a Kansas City wholesaler. It held that both Missouri's procedures for the seizure of allegedly obscene material and the execution of the warrant itself violated the Fourth and Fourteenth amendments' prohibitions on search and seizure without due process. Those violations, in turn, threatened the rights protected by the First Amendment.

NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415 (1963), is a 6-to-3 ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States which held that the reservation of jurisdiction by a federal district court did not bar the U.S. Supreme Court from reviewing a state court's ruling, and also overturned certain laws enacted by the state of Virginia in 1956 as part of the Stanley plan and massive resistance, as violating the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The statutes here stricken down by the Supreme Court had expanded the definitions of the traditional common law crimes of barratry, champerty, and maintenance and had been targeted at the NAACP and its civil rights litigation.

Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551 (1972), was a United States Supreme Court ruling that the passing out of anti-war leaflets at the Lloyd Center in Portland, Oregon was an infringement on property rights. This went against Marsh v. Alabama (1946) which held that United States protected free speech rights on private property when used for public use.

References