Case Study: Doucette V. City Of Santa Monica

Facts: Plaintiffs Carl and Elaine Miles, owners and impresarios of “Blackie, The Talking Cat” brought a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the S.D. Georgia, challenging the constitutionality of the Augusta, GA, Business License Ordinance. They complained that the ordinance was inapplicable in their case “accepting contributions from pedestrian in the downtown Augusta area, who wanted to hear the cat speak “and that the ordinance violates the rights of speech. The Plaintiffs attacked the ordinance as being unconstitutional and overbroad in contravention of the due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The case dealt with Jeff Quon, a police sergeant at the Ontario Police Department who was issued a pager in October of 2001 because of his work on the the department 's SWAT Team. Quon allegedly went over his allotted number of text messages on his department issued pager a repeated number of times, which resulted in an additional fee that Quon paid. The department took notice of the high number of messages and decided to look into the matter to see if the limit was set too low and to make sure the messages being sent on the company pagers were work related. During their review of the transcripts they found many personal messages, which resulted in Quon being reprimanded by the department. Quon felt the actions of his workplace were unfair on the basis of the Fourth Amendment and brought action against the city. It is important to note that before the pagers were issued to employees, a Computer Policy was announced for every employee that stated the department “reserves the right to monitor and log all network activity including e-mail and Internet use, with or without notice [and] users should have no expectation of privacy or confidentiality when using these resources”. The trial judge originally believed that Quon was right to expect the messages he sent using the pager owned by his workplace were going to be kept private. However, the judge eventually determined at the trial that the police department

David Leon Riley was pulled over by a police officer for a driving a vehicle with expired license tags. The police officer who initially stopped Riley discovered that his driver’s license had also been suspended. Following department procedures, the police officer then continued to impound his vehicle. Before the car was impounded, the police officers are required to do an inventory of all of the components of the vehicle to prevent being liable for any missing items after the car is recovered, as well as, to discover any illegal or dangerous items. During the vehicle search, officers found two handguns under the hood of Riley’s vehicle and then proceeded to arrest Riley for the possession of firearms. When the arresting officer conducted a person’s search of Riley, it was found that Riley had a cell phone in his pocket. The cell phone was taken by police and taken back to the station where an analyst discovered data on Riley’s cell phone that was ultimately used to tie Riley to a drive-by shooting that had occurred a few weeks earlier. Based on the pictures and video recovered by the detective analyst specializing in gangs, and ballistics tests conducted on the two hand guns found in Riley’s vehicle, the state of California charged Riley in connection with the shooting. The arresting officer accessed data stored on Riley’s cell phone and noticed a repeated term associated with a street gang.

The Center for Constitutional Rights filed the federal class action lawsuit Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al. against the City of New York to challenge the New York Police Department’s practices of racial profiling and unconstitutional stop and frisks of New York City residents.

In Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374 (1994), “the Commission required that petitioner [Florence Dolan] dedicate the portion of her property lying within the 100-year floodplain for improvement of a storm drainage system along Fanno Creek and that she dedicate an additional 15-foot strip of land adjacent to the floodplain as a pedestrian/bicycle pathway” in order to relieve traffic congestion to and from her plumbing and electric supply store (Dolan v. City of Tigard 1994, 2). This case differs, but in both Nollan and Dolan, the City failed to make an individualized determination that the required dedications are related to the projected impact of the proposed development. Surely, in both cases the nexus test was used to determine if the

Public streets provide not only the transportation, but the vitality, attraction, and interaction in a city. A willingness to walk on and use the streets is essential to businesses, and to the life and economic success of a city. Robert Teir, Maintaining Safety and Civility in Public Spaces: A Constitutional Approach to Aggressive Begging, 54 La. L. Rev. 285, 288 (1993). However, these social catalysts only exist if public spaces are viewed as desirable and attractive. Id. at 289. Unfortunately, when parks or sidewalks are a place of frequent intimidation and intrusion, they become a place not to be sought out, but rather to be avoided. Citizens and visitors begin to think twice about taking their children to the park or square, or taking a walk to the lake, the coffee shop, or the corner store, due to the unwillingness to want to face solicitors because of the frequent intimidation, intrusion, and oftentimes violent and coercive nature of panhandling. Because panhandling threatens the community, as well as personal security, it must be regulated in order to maintain attractive and secure public spaces. Id. at

In the case Katz V. the United States in 1967, Katz was convicted under an indictment charging him under 18 U.S code 1084, which is conducting illegal gambling operations across state lines in violation of federal law (US Couts). At his trial, Katz sought out to exclude any evidence found against him, connected to the wire taps the police officer had placed on the phone booth he used to make the calls. Katz argued that the warrant-less wiretapping of a public phone booth was an unreasonable search of a “constitutionally protected area” in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The federal agents countered by saying that a public phone booth was not “constitutionally protected area” therefore they were able to place the wiretap with no issue (US Courts). The court ruled that it was the duty of the officer to get a warrant in any instance in which a persons may be engaging in conduct that they wish to keep secret from the public, even if done in a public place. The court also held that the absence of the search warrant, constituted the wiretaps to be unconstitutional in this case (US Courts).

Facts of the case: Decades of economic decline, led the city of New London to declare a “distressed municipality”, with the unemployment rate doubled, the city of New London approved an “economic revitalization” plan, and authorized a non-profit organization; New London Development Corporation (NDCL) to take the development plan into action. Pfizer announced a plan to build a research facility in the Fort Trumbull area, which was home to 115 private properties. These properties are being taken by New London, and just compensation is to be given to the owners. Susette Kelo (Plaintiff) sued the city of New London and NDCL (Defendant) on grounds that the ‘public use’ restriction in the Fifth Amendment was being violated by the takings of private property. The defendants argued that the development plan was an opportunity to attract new businesses opportunities to the area, although it wouldn’t be open to the public, it would serve public purpose. A first trial prohibited New London from taking the properties, but an appeal from the State Supreme Court granted permission to take the properties. A second appeal by Kelo to the Supreme Court, was affirmed by 5-4 in favor of the State Supreme Court.

Miller v. California was one of the first attempts to define what would constitute as obscene matter in the eyes of the law. The prosecution came about because Miller started a mail campaign to advertise the sale of adult material. Some of the recipients found the material offensive and alerted the local police. This distribution was found in violation of a California act prohibiting the distribution of obscene material. The court case decided that obscene materials did not fall under the protection of the First Amendment in a 5-to-4 decision. Miller v. California also lead to the modification of both Roth v. United States and Memoirs v. Massachusetts, which was a case that had originally set the tests for obscenity. This case set the standards

Heffron is similar to our case, because both the regulation in Heffron and our ordinance place restrictions on where individuals are permitted to engage in solicitation. Heffron is wholly similar to our case because the Aston panhandling ordinance was not enacted to silence one particular message and was not an attempt to regulate ideas, as the ordinance applies evenhandedly to all who wish to engage in solicitation in the Square area, regardless of whether the solicitors purpose is private, commercial or charitable. The ordinance expressly states that no verbal solicitations for immediate donations of money or other things of value are permitted “regardless of the solicitor’s purpose or intended use of the money or other thing of value.”

The plaintiff's contention is that the city’s statute violates the equal protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Since the classification at issue involves gender of the users of the public restrooms, it falls within the quasi- suspect categories. Therefore, this city must meet the intermediate scrutiny standard.

The use of cameras has brought tremendous enumeration in the courthouse through the evaluation of the case of Hightower v. City and County of San Francisco which has proved to be very useful in the court house. The subject discovered in this case entail some of the events that happened in the City of San Francisco related to nudity and the use of cameras in this case proved as it creates very important platform relative to the evaluation the incidents that happened in the courthouse.

Panhandling represents a unique issue facing the First Amendment. To the state, panhandlers showcase the negative aspects of society. However, citizens may take pity on these individuals, viewing them as true victims of society. Disregarding humanitarian ideals, the stark reality is that panhandling and inequality will continue to exist. In efforts to maintain cleanliness, and appearance of public streets, the state maintains an interest in regulating solicitation on public streets.

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance, which requires a permit for parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest (53).

Although known with massive residential area areas and diverse traveler destinations, Orange County is quick turning into a promising place for business activities. In fact, a lot of and a lot of firms and corporations square measure being established in varied localities to control and to produce their services and product.