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.