The "gang loitering" ordinance violates the due-process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because it fails to provide adequate notice of what conduct is illegal. The ordinance also fails constitutional review because it leaves unfettered discretion in the hands of law enforcement officers. The court decided the case on vagueness due-process grounds. The court ruled the case did not implicate First Amendment rights.
---> http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/faclibrary/casesummary.aspx?case=Chicago_v_Morales
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US Supreme Court | Loitering
Article |
The relative importance of its application to harmless loitering is magnified by its inapplicability to loitering that has an obviously threatening or illicit purpose.
Accordingly, the Supreme Court found "the Illinois Supreme Court [had] correctly concluded that the ordinance does not provide sufficiently specific limits on the enforcement discretion of the police to meet constitutional standards for definiteness and clarity."
We recognize the serious and
difficult problems testified to by the citizens of Chicago that led to
the enactment of this ordinance. We are mindful that the preservation of
liberty depends in part on the maintenance of social order. However, in
this instance the city has enacted an ordinance that affords too much discretion
to the police and too little notice to citizens who wish to use the public
streets.
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---> http://www.cnn.com/US/9906/10/scotus.01/
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The Chicago Ordinance | Unconstitutional
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See: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1145/is_8_34/ai_55698628
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---> http://www.cnn.com/US/9906/10/scotus.01/
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Anti-Loitering Law Struck Down (June 10, 1999):
Justices rule, 6?3, that Chicago
statute, aimed at gang areas, was unconstitutional. It was found to give
too much discretion to act against innocent people who are in the presence
of suspected gang members
June 10, 1999
From Senior Washington Correspondent
Charles Bierbauer
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Chicago's anti-gang, anti-loitering ordinance, which led to more than 40,000 arrests, was found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on Thursday. The ruling, though, produced a sharp dissent over whose rights were violated.
The justices found the 1992 ordinance, which gave police authority to disperse and subsequently arrest known gang members and those associating with them, was a "violation of freedom of assembly."
"It criminalized status, not conduct," Justice John Paul Stevens said in delivering the opinion for the six-justice majority.
"It allows and even encourages arbitrary police enforcement," Stevens added.
Stevens, a Chicago baseball fan, said the anti-loitering ordinance could be used to prevent a father and son from hanging around Wrigley Field because police would not know if they "intended to rob someone, or just wanted to get a glimpse of Sammy Sosa."
But Justice Antonin Scalia, delivered a strong dissent from the bench on t he 6-3 ruling.
"I would trade my right to loiter in the company of a gang member for the liberation of my neighborhood in an instant," Scalia said.
The ordinance had previously been found unconstitutional by the Illinois Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld that judgment.
The case is City of Chicago vs. Morales, 97-1121,
argued December 9, 1998.
City of Chicago vs. Morales, 97-1121
ACLU
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| ACLU
Informaton | On Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court of Illinois
There is a list of CASES that is useful here
including:
32. The conclusion that the loitering regulation threatened
the right of free movement was essential to the Court's holding in Kolender
[vs. Lawson] because the degree to which a challenged law "threatens
to inhibit the exercise of constitutionally protected rights" is a crucial
aspect of any vagueness determination, bearing directly on
"the clarity that the Constitution demands
of a law."
Village of Hoffman Estates v. The Flipside,
Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U.S. 489, 499 (1982).
I. THE CHICAGO ORDINANCE IS VOID FOR VAGUENESS.
A. The Ordinance Fails to Provide Adequate Notice.
B. The Ordinance Encourages Arbitrary and Discriminatory Enforcement.
II. THE ORDINANCE UNCONSTITUTIONALLY ABRIDGES
THE RIGHT OF FREE MOVEMENT IN PUBLIC PLACES AND FORUMS.
A. The Ordinance Burdens Respondents' Fundamental Right of Free Movement in Public Places and Forums.
B. The Ordinance Fails Constitutional Scrutiny Under Any Recognized Standard.
III. THE ORDINANCE IS SUBSTANTIALLY OVERBROAD
IN VIOLATION OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT.
A. The Ordinance Substantially Burdens Intimate Association.
B. The Ordinance Substantially Burdens Expressive Association.
C. The City Wrongly Asserts That the Ordinance Passes Scrutiny as an Incidental Burden on First Amendment Rights.
IV. THE ORDINANCE VIOLATES THE EIGHTH AMENDMENT BY CRIMINALIZING STATUS.
V. THE ORDINANCE VIOLATES THE FOURTH AMENDMENT
BY REQUIRING ARREST WITHOUT PROBABLE CAUSE.
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FBI -- http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2194/is_n2_v67/ai_20564017
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The U.S. Supreme Court, for example, has ruled that police
officers cannot arrest someone merely for loitering without more to indicate
that criminal conduct is involved.
Chicago and Southern California are reported to have the most gang activity in the country. In 1992, the city of Chicago passed an ordinance that allows police officers to order any group of individuals loitering in a public place to disperse if the officer 'reasonably believes' that someone who belongs to a street gang is in the group.Relying heavily on the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1972 ruling ofAnyone who fails to leave in response to this order can be arrested.
'Loiter' is defined as 'to remain in any one place with no apparent purpose.' As directed by this law, the police department established criteria for identifying street gangs and street gang members.
Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville
(405 U.S. 156),
the Illinois Supreme Court struck
down this ordinance in
City of Chicago v. Morales, 687 N.E.2d 53 (Ill. 1997)
as an arbitrary restriction on personal liberty that did not sufficiently distinguish between innocent and criminal conduct.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently
agreed to review this decision
(Chicago v. Morales [No. 97?1121]
[66 USLW 3686]), which may also signal a re-examination of Papachristou.
Arguments will be heard during the term that begins this October, with a ruling likely in 1999.
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---> http://www.apa.org/monitor/aug98/jn.html
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Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville (405 U.S. 156) 1972
405 U.S. 156
