October
Session
We will cover two (2) areas of law:
1. Freedom of Speech - hate speech
Case
= R.A.V. vs. City of St. Paul -
Facts: In the predawn hours of June 21, 1990, petitioner
and several other teenagers allegedly assembled a crudely made
cross by taping together broken chair legs. They then allegedly
burned the cross inside the fenced yard of a black family that
lived across the street from the house where petitioner was staying.
Although this conduct could have been punished [505 U.S. 377,
380] under any of a number of laws, 1 one of the two provisions
under which respondent city of St. Paul chose to charge petitioner
(then a juvenile) was the St. Paul Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance,
St. Paul, Minn., Legis.Code 292.02 (1990), which provides:
"Whoever places on public or private property a symbol,
object, appellation, characterization
or graffiti, including, but not limited to, a burning cross
or Nazi swastika, which one knows or
has reasonable grounds to know arouses anger, alarm or resentment
in others on the basis of
race, color, creed, religion or gender commits disorderly
conduct and shall be guilty of a
misdemeanor."
Petitioner moved to dismiss this count on the ground that the
St. Paul ordinance was substantially
overbroad and impermissibly content based, and therefore facially
invalid under the First
Amendment.
2. Physician Assisted Suicide -
Case
= Cruzan v. Missouri Department of Mental Health -
Facts: Petitioner Nancy Cruzan is incompetent, having
sustained severe injuries in an automobile accident, and now lies
in a Missouri state hospital in what is referred to as a persistent
vegetative state: generally, a condition in which a person exhibits
motor reflexes but evinces no indications of
significant cognitive function. The State is bearing the cost
of her care. Hospital employees refused,
without court approval, to honor the request of Cruzan's parents,
co-petitioners here, to terminate
her artificial nutrition and hydration, since that would result
in death. A state trial court authorized the
termination, finding that a person in Cruzan's condition has a
fundamental right under the State and
Federal Constitutions to direct or refuse the withdrawal of death-prolonging
procedures, and that
Cruzan's expression to a former housemate that she would not wish
to continue her life if sick or
injured unless she could live at least halfway normally suggested
that she would not wish to continue
on with her nutrition and hydration. The State Supreme Court reversed.