Carey v. Brown

Mr. Justice Stewart,

concurring.

The opinion of the Court in this case, as did the Court’s opinion in Police Department of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U. S. 92, invokes the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as the basis of decision. But what was actually at stake in Mosley, and is at stake here, is the basic meaning of the constitutional protection of free speech:

“[W]hile a municipality may constitutionally impose reasonable time, place, and manner regulations on the *472use of its streets and sidewalks for First Amendment purposes, and may even forbid altogether such use of some of its facilities; what a municipality may not do under the First and Fourteenth Amendments is t-o discriminate in the regulation of expression on the basis of the content of that expression.” Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U. S. 507, 520. (Citations omitted.)

It is upon this understanding that I join the opinion and judgment of the Court.