More than 30 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the First Amendment rights of those who sought to demonstrate on the sidewalks around the high court. Could the justices soon confront a First Amendment challenge to the prohibition on demonstrations on their marble plaza?
On Aug. 28, a federal appellate panel, relying in part on that 1983 precedent, upheld the federal ban on all assemblies and displays on the plaza in Hodge v. Talkin. The unanimous panel used the older decision — United States v. Grace — to distinguish the plaza, which it held was a nonpublic forum, from the sidewalks, a public forum, according to Grace. It was not exactly the outcome that the winning advocate in 1983 would have preferred.
