A divided Supreme Court limited the power of local communities Friday to require permits for parades and rallies.
The court, by a 5-4 vote, ruled that a permit law in Forsyth County, Ga., unlawfully hampers free-speech rights.The court said the Forsyth County law, prompted by tense racial confrontations between civil rights marchers and counter-demonstrators, gives too much discretion to a county administrator to decide what a permit fee will cost.
It was not clear how broad a practical impact the case will have in other communities. But permit fees commonly are charged for parades and rallies.
"The Forsyth County ordinance contains more than the possibility of censorship through uncontrolled discretion," Justice Harry Blackmun wrote for the court. "The ordinance often requires that the fee be based on the content of the speech."
The law gives the administrator the authority to set a permit fee based on the anticipated cost of police protection and administrative time.
"The fee assessed will depend on the administrator's measure of the amount of hostility likely to be created by the speech based on its content," Blackmun said. "Those wishing to express views unpopular with bottle-throwers, for example, may have to pay more for their permit."
Blackmun was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy and David H. Souter.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Byron White, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented. They said the court's majority should have limited its inquiry to whether fees of up to $1,000 for parade and rally fees are valid.
The court also Friday struck down a key provision of a law aimed at forcing states to dispose of low-level radioactive waste generated within their borders.
By a 6-3 vote, the justices agreed with New York officials that Congress went too far in enacting the so-called "take title" provision due to take effect in 1996. The provision says states without disposal sites will become the unwilling owners of low-level radioactive waste, most of it from commercial sources, on Jan. 1, 1996.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the provision violates states' rights. "No matter how powerful the federal interest involved, the Constitution simply does not give Congress the authority to require the states to regulate," she said.
"Where a federal interest is sufficiently strong to cause Congress to legislate, it must do so directly," she said. "It may not conscript state governments as its agents."
But the court upheld other provisions of the law that create incentives for the states to dispose of the waste.