Cox v. Louisiana

The Court independently reviewed the record because the case involved First Amendment rights. That review showed a peaceful, organized demonstration: the students marched in an orderly fashion, sang patriotic and religious songs, prayed, and listened to a speech. Their applause and cheering in response to singing by jailed students did not transform the meeting into a riot or otherwise unprotected conduct.

The State's real concern was not violence by the demonstrators but the possibility that hostile white spectators might react to the students' protest. The students neither threatened violence nor engaged in fighting words, and a large police force separated them from the onlookers. Constitutional rights cannot be denied merely because the public is hostile to their exercise; otherwise, opponents of a message would hold a veto over protected speech.

Cox's call for nonviolent sit-ins and his criticism of segregation remained protected advocacy. Speech does not lose First Amendment protection simply because it is provocative, challenges prevailing views, or creates tension and dissatisfaction.

The Louisiana court defined a breach of the peace broadly enough to include conduct that agitates, arouses, interrupts, disquiets, or disturbs others. That definition allowed punishment of peaceful expression merely because it unsettled listeners or challenged local prejudices.

The Court relied on the principle that free speech often invites dispute and may properly produce unrest, anger, or dissatisfaction. A law that permits punishment on those grounds leaves too much room for suppressing unpopular ideas and is incompatible with the First Amendment.

The Court accepted that government may regulate the time, place, and manner of demonstrations to keep streets and sidewalks available for ordinary travel. A speaker has no general First Amendment right to block a street, seal off an entrance, or hold a meeting wherever and whenever he chooses without regard to public convenience.

But Baton Rouge did not apply its obstruction statute as a uniform traffic rule. Officials testified that some parades and meetings that obstructed traffic were allowed when arrangements were made with authorities, yet neither the statute nor any governing regulation supplied standards for deciding which demonstrations would be permitted.

That practice effectively gave local officials unrestricted power to decide which groups and messages could use public spaces. Such discretion invites censorship and discriminatory enforcement. Limited, objective authority to regulate demonstrations is permissible, but unfettered discretion to allow some peaceful assemblies while punishing others is not.

Courthouses are not ordinary public forums in every respect. A State has a substantial interest in protecting judges, jurors, witnesses, litigants, and court proceedings from coercion, intimidation, and disruption caused by demonstrations directed at pending judicial business.

The statute was directed at picketing or parading near a courthouse with intent to interfere with, obstruct, or impede the administration of justice. Properly understood, that limited objective did not prohibit all criticism of courts or all public discussion of judicial matters, so the Court declined to invalidate the law on its face.

The police chief directed Cox to keep the demonstration on the west side of the street, and a disinterested witness understood that the officials had agreed the group could demonstrate there if it remained within those limits. Cox and the students complied with the location restriction imposed by the authorities.

Even though the State could generally protect courthouse operations through a narrowly drawn anti-picketing law, fundamental fairness barred prosecution for conduct the police had affirmatively permitted and supervised. The State could not authorize the demonstration in practical terms and then punish Cox for carrying it out as directed.