A Manhattan federal judge has struck down a rarely invoked New York state law that prohibited picketing outside courthouses, finding that the decades-old statute violated First Amendment rights to free speech.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York ruled Wednesday that the 1952 law, which bans shouting and signage within 200 feet of a courthouse, was “facially unconstitutional” because it was a “content-based restriction on speech in a public forum that fails strict scrutiny.”