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Reason
Reason
Eugene Volokh

S. Ct. Marshal Asks for Enforcement of Md. Residential Picketing Ban; but that Ban Is Likely Unconstitutional

The Marshal of the Supreme Court has asked the Governor of Maryland and the Montgomery County Chief Executive to enforce Maryland's and Montgomery County's residential picketing bans "outside of the homes of Supreme Court Justices who live in" those jurisdictions. And content-neutral restrictions on residential picketing are generally constitutional (see item 2 below).

[1.] But the Maryland law appears to be unconstitutional under the Supreme Court's decision in Carey v. Brown (1980), because it's not content-neutral. The law (which bans assemblies conducted "in a manner that disrupts a person's right to tranquility in the person's home") has an exception for "picketing or assembly in connection with a labor dispute," and Carey held that a similar exception in an Illinois statute for "picketing of a place of employment involved in a labor dispute" made the statute unconstitutionally content-based.

As with the Illinois statute in Carey, the Maryland statute "accords preferential treatment to the expression of views on one particular subject; information about labor disputes may be freely disseminated, but discussion of all other issues is restricted:

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