Herridge v. Montgomery County ( 2022 )

Case: 21-20264 Document: 00516264647 Page: 1 Date Filed: 04/01/2022
United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
FILED
April 1, 2022
No. 21-20264
Lyle W. Cayce
Clerk
Joshua Herridge,
Plaintiff—Appellant,
versus
Montgomery County, Texas; Jimmy Williams,
individually and in his official capacity as Fire
Marshal for Montgomery County, Texas,
Defendants—Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Texas
USDC No. 4:19-CV-4259
Before Wiener, Graves, and Ho, Circuit Judges.
Per Curiam:*
We have considered the briefs, the oral arguments of counsel, and
pertinent portions of the record in this appeal. To the extent the unwritten
policy enforced against Plaintiff-Appellant Joshua Herridge prevents him
*
Pursuant to 5th Circuit Rule 47.5, the court has determined that this
opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited
circumstances set forth in 5th Circuit Rule 47.5.4.
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No. 21-20264
from orally preaching, we affirm for essentially the same reasons set forth by
the district court in its Order Granting Summary Judgment filed April 20,
2021.
However, the record indicates that the Defendants-Appellees also
intended, and intend, to prevent Herridge from leafleting and sign-holding at
relevant events. The district court’s order did not address whether a ban on
these activities is necessary to protect public safety. Given the district court’s
superior familiarity with the facts of this case, we vacate that court’s order
insofar as it allows the Defendant-Appellees to stop Herridge from engaging
in those two specific activities, and remand to allow that court to make a
detailed analysis as to those activities and to enter judgment accordingly.
The district court’s judgment is affirmed in part, see 5th Cir.
R. 47.6, and vacated in part. The matter is remanded for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion.
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James E. Graves, Jr., Circuit Judge, concurring:
I write separately to highlight two significant matters. One is about the
activities for which Herridge seeks permission and the other is about a Sixth
Circuit decision. Nevertheless, I fully join the majority opinion.
Joshua Herridge sued Montgomery County after he was prohibited
from preaching, leafletting, and holding signs directly in front of the Cynthia
Woods Mitchell Pavilion during a ZZ Top concert. Instead, officers asked
Herridge to relocate diagonally across the intersection—from the southwest
to the northeast corner of the streets, where he would have been allowed to
preach, leaflet, and hold signs. During this encounter, Herridge told officers
he was at the Pavilion to preach, which he confirmed in his first demand letter
to the County. Over a year after this encounter, Herridge testified that his
goal with this lawsuit was to obtain permission to preach on public property.
On appeal, however, Herridge now asserts that he only wants to leaflet and
hold signs. 1 In my view, those factual differences are important.
Further, at oral argument, counsel for Herridge urged the court to
review the Sixth Circuit’s decision in Saieg v. City of Dearborn, 641 F.3d 727(6th Cir. 2011) as persuasive authority on permissible signage and leafletting.
But, I fail to see any meaningful comparison to the facts here. In the area
where Saieg wanted to leaflet, the City of Dearborn “permit[ted] sidewalk
vendors, whose activity [was] more obstructive to sidewalk traffic flow than
pedestrian leaflet[t]ing [was].” Id. at 727. Here, the Pavilion does not allow
1
Only once before this appeal did Herridge state he “only wants to hand out
literature and display a sign in the public area abounding Lake Robbins Drive.” However,
this statement occurred before Herridge’s deposition where he reaffirmed that he wanted
to preach.
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any activity during large events—vendors, booths, and leafletting are equally
banned.
The Saieg court also highlighted the discrepancy between the City of
Dearborn’s stated interest and the resulting prohibition: “[T]he prohibition
of pedestrian leaflet[t]ing in the outer perimeter is not narrowly tailored to the
goal of isolating inner areas from vehicular traffic.” 641 F.3d at 740 (emphasis
in original). Here, the record indicates that the Pavilion’s full prohibition on
pedestrian activities stems from a heightened concern that pedestrian
congestion caused solely by concert attendees already creates danger of
spillage into the streets where vehicles could hit pedestrians. The prohibition
on pedestrian activities seeks to prevent increased pedestrian traffic which
would exacerbate the pre-existing danger to pedestrians due to vehicular
traffic.
Lastly, to the extent Saieg is comparable, the Sixth Circuit concluded
that narrow tailoring should be addressed from “the perspective of
permitting everyone to leaflet, not only [one person].” 641 F.3d at 739 (citing
Heffron v. Int’l Soc. for Krishna Consciousness, Inc., 452 U.S. 640, 653 (1981)).
So, in my view, it is neither relevant nor legally significant that Defendants
conceded at oral argument that one individual waiting for a friend in the
restricted area would not be asked to relocate absent a dangerous situation.
Defendants have produced multiple types of evidence, including
photographs, maps, sworn declarations, and deposition testimony, as to their
interests in protecting pedestrians. Cf. Saieg, 641 F.3d at 740 (expressing
disapproval of the “district court’s speculation” as to the government’s
interest being narrowly tailored because “the record [did] not mention any
existing problem of pedestrian traffic . . . . ”). On remand, the district court
can determine whether this evidence satisfies the requisite narrow tailoring
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to prohibit Herridge from leafletting and presenting signs during large scale
events. Accordingly, I concur.
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James C. Ho, Circuit Judge, concurring:
Joshua Herridge is a Christian who seeks to share the gospel by
handing out religious leaflets and holding religious signs while standing in a
grassy curtilage near the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in Montgomery
County, Texas. In particular, he would like to do so during major concerts
and other popular events, to maximize the effectiveness of his outreach. But
police officers have informed him that an unwritten policy forbids him from
doing so. So he brought this suit challenging the asserted policy as a violation
of his freedom of speech under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. 1
This case indisputably implicates fundamental freedoms secured by
our Constitution. The “dissemination of . . . religious views and doctrines is
protected by the First Amendment.” Heffron v. Int’l Soc. for Krishna
Consciousness, Inc., 452 U.S. 640, 647 (1981). And although “the government
may impose reasonable restrictions on the time, place, or manner of
protected speech,” such restrictions must be, among other things, “narrowly
tailored to serve a significant governmental interest.” Ward v. Rock Against
Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 791 (1989).
So local officials may not “burden substantially more speech than is
necessary to further the government’s legitimate interests.” Id. at 799. “A
complete ban can be narrowly tailored”—but “only if each activity within the
proscription’s scope is an appropriately targeted evil.” Id. at 800 (quoting
Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474, 485 (1988)) (emphasis added).
1
This appeal concerns leaflets and signs, not street preaching. In his brief on
appeal, Herridge states that he “does not seek to preach, but leaflet or hold a sign, in the
Montgomery County right-of-way on the block running with Lake Robbins Drive. . . .
Herridge does not wish to preach in the right-of-way location. In this spot, he only wants
to hand out literature or hold a sign.” And during oral argument, his counsel further
confirmed that his appeal concerns leaflets and signs, not preaching.
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Defendants do not appear to meet this rigorous standard of review.
To be sure, they defend the unwritten policy as necessary to prevent
pedestrian and vehicular obstructions that would jeopardize public safety.
And to support that justification, they present evidence of previous traffic
obstruction and danger to public safety caused by commercial vendors selling
their wares in the same area during major Pavilion events.
But Defendants present no record evidence that allowing religious
leafletting or signs—in contrast to commercial vendors—would result in any
meaningful obstruction or danger to the public.
That is a fatal omission. The county cannot justify a restriction on
religious leafletting based on harms caused by commercial activity. After all,
“sidewalk vendors” are surely “more obstructive to sidewalk traffic flow
than pedestrian leafleting.” Saieg v. City of Dearborn, 641 F.3d 727, 730 (6th
Cir. 2011). And respect for First Amendment freedoms requires government
officials to be sensitive to such distinctions. See, e.g., id. at 740 (“permitting
everyone to leaflet . . . does not require the city to permit street vending”);
United States v. Belsky, 799 F.2d 1485, 1489 (11th Cir. 1986) (“The distinction
. . . between the distribution of literature and the solicitation of funds is . . . a
reasonable one. Soliciting funds is an inherently more intrusive and
complicated activity than is distributing literature. A passerby can take a
pamphlet and keep walking. Soliciting funds, on the other hand, can require
an extended encounter.”); Heffron, 452 U.S. at 665 (Blackmun, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“common-sense differences
between literature distribution, on the one hand, and solicitation and sales,
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on the other, suggest that the latter activities present greater crowd control
problems than the former”). 2
What’s more, Defendants admitted during oral argument that a single
individual standing in the same restricted area while, for instance, waiting for
a friend to arrive would not be asked to relocate unless the police actually
observed a dangerous obstruction. The county has not explained why
Herridge should be treated any differently. See, e.g., Saieg, 641 F.3d at 737–
38 (“The defendants admitted at oral argument that leafleters have never
posed any problems of public safety or breach of the peace at the Festival that
could make leafleters more obtrusive than sidewalk vendors. By permitting
the more obstructive sidewalk tables in the same place where Saieg wishes to
leaflet by foot, the defendants have undercut the credibility of the asserted
government interests.”).
In the absence of a demonstrated danger, the Constitution requires the
county to respect Herridge’s First Amendment right to engage in religious
leafletting. That said, I agree with the panel majority that these are issues
that can be addressed on remand. Accordingly, I concur.
2
In Heffron, the Supreme Court upheld a regulation of speech against First
Amendment challenge. But that regulation permitted precisely what Herridge seeks to do
here: distribute literature from a fixed position. See, e.g., id. at 643–44 (“Although the Rule
does not prevent organizational representatives from walking about the fairgrounds and
communicating the organization’s views with fair patrons in face-to-face discussions, it
does require that any exhibitor conduct its sales, distribution, and fund solicitation
operations from a booth rented from the Society.”); id. at 655 (“The organization may also
arrange for a booth and distribute and sell literature and solicit funds from that location on
the fairgrounds itself.”).
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