Hoffman v. Hunt
| Decision Date | 22 February 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. 3:93-CV-393-P.,3:93-CV-393-P. |
| Citation | 845 F. Supp. 340 |
| Parties | Sharon HOFFMAN, Trudie Matthews, Diane Hoefling, Rev. Ronnie Wallace, and Rev. John Bradley, Plaintiffs, v. James B. HUNT, The State of North Carolina, D.R. Stone, and The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of North Carolina |
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Raymond A. Warren, Charlotte, NC, for plaintiffs.
Ann Reed, David F. Hoke, North Carolina Dept. of Justice, Raleigh, NC, G. Michael Barnhill, Jim D. Cooley, Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice, Charlotte, NC, for defendants.
THIS MATTER is before the Court on Plaintiffs' complaint praying for a Declaratory Judgment and Plaintiffs' motions for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction, filed December 6, 1993. Also before the Court are Defendants' (Hunt and North Carolina; collectively, the State's) motions to dismiss for Plaintiffs' lack of standing, failure to state a claim, lack of subject matter jurisdiction, and alternatively, to abstain, filed December 29, 1993. On January 3, 1994, Defendants D.R. Stone (the Police Chief) and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department also filed motions to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, lack of personal jurisdiction, failure to state a claim, and alternatively, to abstain. The Court heard oral argument on these motions on January 14, 1994.
The Court has carefully reviewed the complaint, Plaintiffs' and Defendants' briefs, and the arguments presented at the hearing. The Court has also undertaken a thorough review of the affidavits and other exhibits, as well as the applicable case law. Based upon the Court's review of this case at the present stage, the Court makes the following conclusions.
Plaintiffs are citizens who believe legalized abortion is murder. Because of their moral objections to abortion, Plaintiffs have engaged in, and hope to continue conducting, a broad array of remonstrative and informative activities outside abortion clinics. Plaintiffs' efforts outside the abortion clinics have taken on various forms such as "protest marches, leafletting, display of signs and placards, sidewalk counseling, organized picketing, writing and distributing literature, and engaging individuals in conversation about the abortion of human fetuses." Complaint ¶ 10, p. 4.
Plaintiffs believe N.C.G.S. § 14-277.4, a statute which criminalizes certain forms of civil protest, interferes with several of their constitutionally protected rights. Consequently, Plaintiffs brought this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 seeking a declaration by this Court that N.C.G.S. § 14-277.4 is unconstitutional and requesting injunctive relief so that they may continue their public dissent against legalized abortion without fear of criminal prosecution. N.C.G.S. § 14-277.4 provides in relevant part:
Specifically, Plaintiffs believe this statute is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad in violation of the First Amendment's protection of free speech. Furthermore, they believe this statute violates the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of assembly and religion. Plaintiffs also believe the statute denies them their Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection of the law because it discriminates between classes of protestors. They also complain that the statute unconstitutionally delegates authority to police officers in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's due process right, and that its criminal contempt provision deprives them of their rights to trial by jury, indictment, due process and equal protection.
The Court believes this action is in such an early stage that it poses certain problems in addressing the respective motions. Specifically, the Court notes that no answer has been filed and that the Court has before it two essential legal questions. First, the Court must decide whether Plaintiffs have standing to bring this action. Second, the Court must decide whether Plaintiff's complaint states a claim. Yet, in this case, to decide the first question requires the Court to resolve the second question. That is, Plaintiffs cannot be said to have suffered a justiciable injury in fact unless they are credibly faced with prosecution under a statute that is somehow unconstitutional. This Court believes that because of the scant record before it, it is premature for it to decide the constitutionality of the statute in question and yet, to decide the other questions, there necessarily arises a need to decide the constitutionality issue.
Consequently, the Court will proceed to analyze the legal issues before it by only considering whether the complaint states a colorable constitutional infirmity in the statute, not whether the statute is now and forevermore unconstitutional.
Rule 12(b)(6) places the burden upon the party seeking dismissal to demonstrate the non-moving party has stated no facts in its complaint which entitle it to relief. In evaluating such a motion, the Court must assume all well plead facts are true and draw all reasonable inferences from those facts in favor of the non-moving party. Miree v. DeKalb County, 433 U.S. 25, 97 S.Ct. 2490, 53 L.Ed.2d 557 (1977). Consequently, "a complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief." Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45, 46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 101, 102, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957).1
The Court finds Plaintiffs' complaint states, at the least, a colorable claim that § 14-277.4 is overbroad and vague. Having reached this conclusion, the Court does not believe it is necessary to consider the other maladies named in Plaintiffs' complaint since these findings alone are sufficient for the Court to evaluate the substantive aspects of this action and still move on to evaluate the more immediate concerns presented by the jurisdictional motions to dismiss and the request for injunctive remedies.
This statute prohibits persons from obstructing others exiting or entering a "health care facility" in a particular way. The statute provides that the prohibited "manner" of obstruction is that which "deprives or delays the person from obtaining or providing health care services in the facility." N.C.G.S. § 14-277.4(a). At first blush, this seems tolerable because the statute's reader assumes that blocking or obstructing can only occur by physical means. But the statute itself does not say this. Indeed, the statute focuses not on how the blockage or obstruction is conducted, but instead upon the effect which the blocker's or obstructor's actions have on the persons being blocked or obstructed. That is, this statute does not so much prohibit what the person facing criminal sanction does, as it makes criminal the effect of that persons' conduct on one seeking to enter or exit a health care facility. A person, as contemplated by this statute, can be both physically and psychologically obstructed, or delayed from entering a health care facility. Consequently, the statute appears to go beyond the physical aspects of blocking or obstructing which come to mind in the common usages of those words and invades that murky area where protected speech is implicated.
Statutes cannot survive a facial attack to their overbreadth if they are "susceptible of application to speech, ... that is ... protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments." Lewis v. City of New Orleans, 415 U.S. 130, 134, 94 S.Ct. 970, 972, 39 L.Ed.2d 214 (1974). With the scant record now before the Court, it is impossible to make legal conclusions with certitude. The Court's duty at this stage is to draw all reasonable inferences in Plaintiffs' favor. Having done this, the Court believes it is not inconceivable that facts could be proven to demonstrate this statute does substantially impinge upon protected conduct like speech. Consequently, the Court finds the complaint states a claim for a First Amendment overbreadth challenge sufficient to overcome a motion to dismiss.
The Court also preliminarily finds this statute fails to include certain features, such as "fair notice or warning," sufficient to provide the definiteness necessary in a criminal statute. Smith v. Goguen, 415 U.S. 566, 572, 94 S.Ct. 1242, 1246, 39 L.Ed.2d 605 (1974). For example, the statute does not explicitly limit its prohibitions to physical blockage of health care facilities. Indeed, the statute strongly implies that its reach goes beyond mere physical obstruction contemplating other forms of obstruction in subsection (e) which provides, "This section shall not prohibit any person from engaging in lawful speech or picketing which does not impede or deny another person's access to health care services ... or interfere with the delivery of health care services within a health care facility. Id. §§ (e) (emphasis added). Two observations may be made about this provision.
First, by explicitly protecting "speech or...
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