Concerned Women for America Inc. v. Lafayette County

• Decision Date: 14 September 1989
• Docket Number: No. 88-4743,88-4743
• Parties: CONCERNED WOMEN FOR AMERICA, INC. and Jolene Cox, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. LAFAYETTE COUNTY and Oxford Public Library, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 32

883 F.2d 32

CONCERNED WOMEN FOR AMERICA, INC. and Jolene Cox, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. LAFAYETTE COUNTY and Oxford Public Library, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 88-4743.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

Sept. 14, 1989.

Hal Scot Spragins, S.T. Rayburn, David L. Calder, Sumners, Hickman & Rayburn, Oxford, Miss., for defendant-appellant.

Jordan Lorence, Cimron Campbell, Mark N. Troobnick, Concerned Women for America Educ. and Legal Defense Foundation, Washington, D.C., Wendell R. Bird, David J. Myers, Law Offices of Wendell Bird, Atlanta, Ga., for plaintiffs-appellees.

Sarah Barringer Gordon, Fine, Kaplan and Black, Philadelphia, Pa., for amicus curiae-ACLU of Mississippi.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.

Before JOLLY, HIGGINBOTHAM and SMITH, Circuit Judges.

E. GRADY JOLLY, Circuit Judge:

In this first amendment civil rights action, Concerned Women for America ("CWA") and Jolene Cox, its Mississippi representative, sought declaratory and injunctive relief against the Lafayette County and Oxford Public Library because of its refusal to allow a CWA Prayer Chapter the use of its auditorium. On appeal, we are asked to consider whether the district court erred in concluding that the library had created a public forum, rather than a limited public forum, by allowing various community groups to hold their meetings in its auditorium, and thus erred in granting the injunction. 699 F.Supp. 95.

I

The following is Lafayette County Oxford Library's only written auditorium policy:

The Auditorium of the Oxford branch of the First Regional Library is open for use of groups or organizations of a civic, cultural or educational character, but not for social gatherings, entertaining, dramatic productions, money-raising, or commercial purposes. It is also not available for meetings for social, political, partisan or religious purposes, or when in the judgment of the Director or Branch Librarian any disorder is likely to occur.

In order to gain access to the auditorium, a group must obtain permission from Dorothy Fitts, the head librarian. Although the library contends that its policy was to open the auditorium only to groups meeting for artistic or educational purposes, Fitts testified at the hearing on CWA's motion for a preliminary injunction that once she determined that a group would not be meeting for a religious or political purpose, and that there was room on the calendar, she would grant the group permission to use the auditorium. The library has in the past been consistent in denying religious and political groups use of the auditorium.

In June 1988, Jolene Cox requested to use the auditorium for a CWA Prayer Chapter meeting. At these meetings, CWA members discuss family and political issues, pray about those issues, and seek to apply Biblical principles to them. Some CWA meetings also include guest lectures on specific topics. Fitts denied Cox's request, stating that such a meeting would violate library policy because the CWA was a group with religious purposes.

CWA and Cox filed a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief against the library, arguing that its actions violated their constitutional rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, free exercise of religion, and equal protection of the laws. After a hearing, the district court found that the library, by opening up in the past to groups "hav[ing] little to do with the Library's educational and artistic mission," had created, perhaps "unwittingly," a public forum from which it could not now restrict access based upon the content of a group's meeting. Accordingly, the court granted CWA's preliminary injunction, enjoining the library from refusing to allow CWA to meet in the auditorium. The library appeals from that order.

II

Our standard of review for the grant of a preliminary injunction is "whether the issuance of the injunction, in the light of the applicable standard, constitute[s] an abuse of discretion," Doran v. Salem Inn, Inc., 422 U.S. 922, 932, 95 S.Ct. 2561, 2568, 45 L.Ed.2d 648 (1975). A preliminary injunction will issue if the movant establishes (1) a substantial likelihood of success on the merits, (2) a substantial threat of irreparable injury if the injunction is not issued, (3) that the threatened injury if the injunction is denied outweighs any harm that will result if the injunction is granted, and (4) that the grant of an injunction will not disserve the public interest. See Clark v. Prichard, 812 F.2d 991, 993 (5th Cir.1987). The parties' dispute in this case is over the first requirement--likelihood of success on the...