Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement (1991)
- Docket
- 91-538
- Decided
- 1991-01-01
Summary
Question: Does an ordinance that permits a government administrator to vary the fee for assembling or parading to reflect the estimated cost of maintaining public order violate the free speech guarantees under the First and Fourteenth Amendments? Conclusion: Yes. Justice Harry A. Blackmun delivered the opinion for the 5-4 majority. The Court held that the ordinance violated the free speech guarantees of the First and Fourteenth Amendments because it contained no reasonable or definite standards to guide the county administrator’s calculation of permit fees. Additionally, the ordinance required the administrator to examine the speech’s content to assess the likelihood of public hostility to the message and adjust the fee accordingly to account for security and law enforcement costs. In the Court’s view, a nominal fee lower than $1000 could not save the ordinance from the constitutional infirmities it found. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote a dissent in which he disagreed with the argument that the Constitution limits a parade license fee to a nominal amount and argued that the Court should have remanded the case to determine the scope of the ordinance and how it was administered. Justice Byron R. White, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Justice Clarence Thomas joined the dissenting opinion.