Project Veritas Action Fund v. Rollins

• Decision Date: 15 December 2020
• Docket Number: No. 19-1629,Nos. 19-1586,19-1640,s. 19-1586,19-1629
• Parties: PROJECT VERITAS ACTION FUND, Plaintiff, Appellee / Cross-Appellant, v. Rachael S. ROLLINS, in her official capacity as District Attorney for Suffolk County, Defendant, Appellant / Cross-Appellee. K. Eric Martin & René Pérez, Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. Rachael S. Rollins, in her official capacity as District Attorney for Suffolk County, Defendant, Appellant, William G. Gross, in his official capacity as Police Commissioner for the City of Boston, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

982 F.3d 813

PROJECT VERITAS ACTION FUND, Plaintiff, Appellee / Cross-Appellant,

v.Rachael S. ROLLINS, in her official capacity as District Attorney for Suffolk County, Defendant, Appellant / Cross-Appellee.

K. Eric Martin & René Pérez, Plaintiffs, Appellees,

v.Rachael S. Rollins, in her official capacity as District Attorney for Suffolk County, Defendant, Appellant,William G. Gross, in his official capacity as Police Commissioner for the City of Boston, Defendant.

Nos. 19-1586

19-1640

No. 19-1629

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

December 15, 2020

Eric A. Haskell, Assistant Attorney General of Massachusetts, with whom Maura Healey, Attorney General of Massachusetts, was on brief, for Appellant/Cross-Appellee Rachael S. Rollins.

Benjamin T. Barr, Gaithersburg, MD, with whom Steve Klein and Statecraft PLLC were on brief, for Appellee/Cross-Appellant Project Veritas.

Jessie J. Rossman, with whom Matthew R. Segal, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Massachusetts, Inc., William D. Dalsen, Boston, MA, and Proskauer Rose LLP were on brief, for Appellees K. Eric Martin and René Pérez.

Adam Schwartz and Sophia Cope on brief for Electronic Frontier Foundation, amicus curiae.

Bruce D. Brown, Katie Townsend, Josh R. Moore, Shannon A. Jankowski, Dan Krockmalnic, Boston, MA, David Bralow, Kurt Wimmer, Washington, DC, Covington & Burling LLP, Joshua N. Pila, Des Moines, IA, James Cregan, Tonda F. Rush, Arlington, VA, Mickey H. Osterreicher, Robert A. Bertsche, Boston, MA, Prince Lobel Tye LLP, David McCraw, New York, NY, Elizabeth C. Koch, Washington, DC, Ballard Spahr LLP, D. Victoria Baranetsky, Bruce W. Sanford, Mark I. Bailen, Washington, DC, and Baker & Hostetler LLP on brief for The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; The American Society of Magazine Editors; Boston Globe Media Partners, LLC; First Look Media Works, Inc.; The Media Institute; Meredith Corporation; MPA - The Association of Magazine Media; National Freedom of Information Coalition; National Newspaper Association; National Press Photographers Association; New England First Amendment Coalition; The New York Times Company; Politico, LLC; Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting; Society of Environmental Journalists; Society of Professional Journalists; and Tully Center for Free Speech, amici curiae.

Oren N. Nimni and Lauren A. Sampson on brief for Lawyers for Civil Rights, Center for Constitutional Rights, and LatinoJustice PRLDEF, amici curiae.

Nicolas Y. Riley and Robert D. Friedman on brief for Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, amicus curiae.

Before Barron, Circuit Judge, Souter,^* Associate Justice, and Selya, Circuit Judge.

BARRON, Circuit Judge.

Massachusetts, like other states concerned about the threat to privacy that commercially available electronic eavesdropping devices pose, makes it a crime to record another person's words secretly and without consent. But, unlike other concerned states, Massachusetts does not recognize any exceptions based on whether that person has an expectation of privacy in what is recorded. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 272, § 99 (" Section 99"). As a result, Massachusetts makes it as much a crime for a civic-minded observer to use a smartphone to record from a safe distance what is said during a police officer's mistreatment of a civilian in a city park as it is for a revenge-seeker to hide a tape recorder under the table at a private home to capture a conversation with an ex-spouse. The categorical and sweeping nature of Section 99 gives rise to the important questions under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution that the challenges that underlie the consolidated appeals before us present.

The first appeal that we address stems from a 2016 suit filed in the District of Massachusetts by two civil rights activists in Boston -- K. Eric Martin and René Pérez ("the Martin Plaintiffs"). They allege that Section 99 violates the First Amendment insofar as it criminalizes the secret, nonconsensual audio recording of police officers discharging their official duties in public spaces. The other appeal that we address stems from a suit filed in that same year in that same district -- and eventually resolved by the same district court judge -- by Project Veritas Action Fund ("Project Veritas"), which is a national media organization dedicated to "undercover investigative journalism."

Project Veritas's suit targets Section 99 insofar as it bans the secret, nonconsensual audio recording of any government official discharging official duties in public spaces, as well as insofar as it bans such recording of any person who does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in what is recorded. Project Veritas also alleges that Section 99 must be struck down in its entirety pursuant to the First Amendment doctrine of overbreadth.

We affirm the District Court's grant of summary judgment to the Martin Plaintiffs, based on its ruling that Section 99 violates the First Amendment by prohibiting the secret, nonconsensual audio recording of police officers discharging their official duties in public spaces. We also affirm the District Court's order dismissing Project Veritas's First Amendment overbreadth challenge for failing to state a claim on which relief may be granted. However, we vacate on ripeness grounds the District Court's order dismissing with prejudice Project Veritas's First Amendment challenge to Section 99 insofar as that statute prohibits the secret, nonconsensual audio recording of individuals who lack an expectation of privacy in what is recorded. For the same reason, we vacate the District Court's grant of summary judgment to Project Veritas on its claim that Section 99 violates the First Amendment insofar as that statute bars the secret, nonconsensual audio recording of government officials discharging their duties in public. We remand the claims asserting these two latter challenges to the District Court with instructions to dismiss them without prejudice for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

I.

We begin by reviewing the background that led to the enactment of Section 99, its key terms, and the way that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ("the SJC") construes them. We then describe the travel of the two cases.

A.

In 1964, Massachusetts created a commission to study whether to strengthen the Commonwealth's prohibitions on electronic eavesdropping. The commission issued its final report in June of 1968, which found "that eavesdropping devices are readily available to members of the public from commercially available stores" and that these devices make it quite easy for even laypeople to use them "for purposes of illegally intercepting wire or oral communications." Report of the Special Commission on Electronic Eavesdropping, 1968 Mass. Sen. Doc. No. 1132, at 6 ("1968 Commission Report"). The report recommended "that wiretapping and eavesdropping other than by law enforcement officers should be strictly prohibited," and it proposed the adoption of an " ‘all-party consent’ provision," "which would require the consent of all parties to a conversation before that conversation could be recorded or otherwise electronically ‘intercepted.’ " Id. at 9, 11.

A month later, the Massachusetts legislature enacted Section 99, which states in its preamble "that the uncontrolled development and unrestricted use of modern electronic surveillance devices pose grave dangers to the privacy of all citizens of the commonwealth." Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 272, § 99(A). The measure goes on to make it a crime for "any person" to "willfully commit[ ] an interception, attempt[ ] to commit an interception, or procure[ ] any other person to commit an interception or to attempt to commit an interception of any wire or oral communication." Id. § 99(C)(1).

Section 99 defines a "wire communication" as "any communication made in whole or in part through the use of facilities for the transmission of communications by the aid of wire, cable, or other like connection between the point of origin and the point of reception." Id. § 99(B)(1). An "oral communication" is defined as "speech, except such speech as is transmitted over the public air waves by radio or other similar device." Id. § 99(B)(2). The term "interception" is defined as follows: "to secretly hear, secretly record, or aid another to secretly hear or secretly record the contents of any wire or oral communication through the use of any intercepting device by any person other than a person given prior authority by all parties to such communication." Id. § 99(B)(4).

B.

Roughly a decade after Section 99's enactment, the SJC construed the measure in Commonwealth v. Jackson, 370 Mass. 502, 349 N.E.2d 337 (1976), which concerned, among other things, whether audio recordings of a kidnapper's ransom calls had been made in violation of Section 99. Id. at 339. In holding that they had been, the SJC agreed that even a recording of the audio of a person who had no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in what was recorded could fall under Section 99's prohibition. Id. at 340.

The SJC explained that if it "were to interpret ‘secretly’ as encompassing only those situations where an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy," it "would render meaningless the Legislature's careful choice of words" in Section 99. Id. The SJC concluded that a nonconsensual audio recording is made "secretly" -- and thus in violation of Section 99 -- if the person recorded does not have "actual knowledge of the recording." Id. The SJC added that actual knowledge of the recording could be "proved where there are clear and unequivocal objective manifestations of knowledge." Id.

Some years later, in Commonwealth v. Hyde, 434 Mass. 594, 750 N.E.2d 963 (2001), the SJC again held that Section 99 did not impliedly exempt recordings of audio of persons who lacked an expectation of privacy in what was recorded. Id. at 965-66. This time, unlike in Jackson, the issue arose in...