MISSOURI
Constitutional Law Prof Blog
By Ruthann Robson
In its opinion today in Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, Inc. v. Joyce, the Eighth Circuit found that Missouri’s “House of Worship Protection Act,” Mo. Rev. Stat. § 574.035, violates the First Amendment.
The statute provides that a person commits the crime of disrupting a house of worship if he or she “[i]ntentionally and unreasonably disturbs, interrupts, or disquiets any house of worship by using profane discourse, rude or indecent behavior, or making noise either within the house of worship or so near it as to disturb the order and solemnity of the worship services.”
The panel’s unanimous and relatively brief opinion, reversing the district judge, found fault with the statute as a content-based regulation, focusing as it does on “profane discourse, rude or indecent behavior.” The panel rejected the state’s argument that it was a mere time, place, or manner regulation subject to a lower level of scrutiny. Instead, the Eighth Circuit quoted the Court’s decision in McCullen v. Coakley last Term that a statute “would not be content neutral if it were concerned with undesirable effects that arise from ‘the direct impact of speech on its audience’ or ‘[l]isteners’ reactions to speech.'”
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