THOMAS et al. v. CHICAGO PARK DISTRICT

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316 OCTOBER TERM, 2001
Syllabus
THOMAS et al. v. CHICAGO PARK DISTRICT
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the seventh circuit
No. 00–1249. Argued December 3, 2001—Decided January 15, 2002
Respondent Chicago Park District adopted an ordinance requiring indi-
viduals to obtain a permit before conducting large-scale events in public
parks. The ordinance provides that the Park District may deny a per-
mit on any of 13 specified grounds, must process applications within
28 days, and must explain its reasons for a denial. An unsuccessful
applicant may appeal, first, to the Park District’s general superintendent
and then to state court. Petitioners, dissatisfied that the Park District
has denied some, though not all, of their applications for permits to hold
rallies advocating the legalization of marijuana, filed a 42 U. S. C. § 1983
suit, alleging, inter alia, that the ordinance is unconstitutional on its
face. The District Court granted the Park District summary judgment,
and the Seventh Circuit affirmed.
Held:
1. A content-neutral permit scheme regulating uses (including speech
uses) of a public forum need not contain the procedural safeguards de-
scribed in Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U. S. 51. Freedman is inap-
posite because, unlike the motion picture censorship scheme in that
case, the Park District’s ordinance is not subject-matter censorship but
content-neutral time, place, and manner regulation of the use of a pub-
lic forum. None of the grounds for denying a permit has anything to
do with the content of speech. Indeed, the ordinance is not directed
at communicative activity as such, but to all activity in a public park.
And its object is not to exclude particular communication, but to coordi-
nate multiple uses of limited space; assure preservation of park facilities;
prevent dangerous, unlawful, or impermissible uses; and assure financial
accountability for damage caused by an event. Pp. 320–323.
2. A content-neutral time, place, and manner regulation can be ap-
plied in such a manner as to stifle free expression. It thus must con-
tain adequate standards to guide an official’s decision and render that
decision subject to effective judicial review. See Niemotko v. Mary-
land, 340 U. S. 268, 271. The Park District’s ordinance meets this test.
That the ordinance describes grounds on which the Park District “may”
deny a permit does not mean that it allows the Park District to waive
requirements for some favored speakers. Such a waiver would be un-
constitutional, but this abuse must be dealt with if and when a pattern

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317 Cite as: 534 U. S. 316 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
of unlawful favoritism appears, rather than by insisting upon a rigid,
no-waiver application of the permit requirements. Pp. 323–325.
3. Because the Park District’s ordinance is not subject to Freed-
man’s procedural requirements, this Court does not reach the question
whether the requirement of prompt judicial review means a prompt
judicial determination or the prompt commencement of judicial proceed-
ings. Pp. 325–326.
227 F. 3d 921, affirmed.
Scalia, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
Richard L. Wilson argued the cause for petitioners. With
him on the briefs were Wayne B. Giampietro and Michael
J. Merrick.
David A. Strauss argued the cause for respondent. With
him on the brief was Steven A. Weiss.
James A. Feldman argued the cause for the United States
as amicus curiae urging affirmance. With him on the brief
were Solicitor General Olson, Acting Assistant Attorney
General Schiffer, Deputy Solicitor General Kneedler, Steph-
anie R. Marcus, William G. Myers III, and Randolph J.
Myers.*
Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the question whether a municipal park
ordinance requiring individuals to obtain a permit before
conducting large-scale events must, consistent with the First
Amendment, contain the procedural safeguards described in
Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U. S. 51 (1965).
*Bonnie I. Robin-Vergeer and Alan B. Morrison filed a brief for Public
Citizen, Inc., as amicus curiae urging reversal.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the City of New
York by Michael D. Hess, Corporation Counsel, Leonard J. Koerner, and
Elizabeth I. Freedman; for the International City-County Management
Association et al. by Richard Ruda and Charles A. Rothfeld; for the Inter-
national Municipal Lawyers Association by Henry W. Underhill, Jr.; and
for Morality in Media, Inc., et al. by Robin S. Whitehead and Bruce A.
Taylor.

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318 THOMAS v. CHICAGO PARK DIST.
Opinion of the Court
I
Respondent, the Chicago Park District (Park District),
is responsible for operating public parks and other public
property in Chicago. See Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 70, § 1505/7.01
(2001). Pursuant to its authority to “establish by ordinance
all needful rules and regulations for the government and pro-
tection of parks . . . and other property under its jurisdic-
tion,” § 1505/7.02, the Park District adopted an ordinance
that requires a person to obtain a permit in order to “conduct
a public assembly, parade, picnic, or other event involving
more than fifty individuals,” or engage in an activity such
as “creat[ing] or emit[ting] any Amplified Sound.” Chicago
Park Dist. Code, ch. VII, §§ C.3.a(1), C.3.a(6). The ordinance
provides that “[a]pplications for permits shall be processed
in order of receipt,” § C.5.a, and the Park District must de-
cide whether to grant or deny an application within 14 days
unless, by written notice to the applicant, it extends the
period an additional 14 days, § C.5.c. Applications can be
denied on any of 13 specified grounds. § C.5.e.1 If the Park
1 Section C.5.e of the ordinance provides in relevant part:
“To the extent permitted by law, the Park District may deny an ap-
plication for permit if the applicant or the person on whose behalf the
application for permit was made has on prior occasions made material
misrepresentations regarding the nature or scope of an event or activity
previously permitted or has violated the terms of prior permits issued to
or on behalf of the applicant. The Park District may also deny an applica-
tion for permit on any of the following grounds:
“(1) the application for permit (including any required attachments
and submissions) is not fully completed and executed;
“(2) the applicant has not tendered the required application fee with
the application or has not tendered the required user fee, indem-
nification agreement, insurance certificate, or security deposit
within the times prescribed by the General Superintendent;
“(3) the application for permit contains a material falsehood or
misrepresentation;
“(4) the applicant is legally incompetent to contract or to sue and
be sued;
“(5) the applicant or the person on whose behalf the application for
permit was made has on prior occasions damaged Park District

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Opinion of the Court
District denies an application, it must clearly set forth in
writing the grounds for denial and, where feasible, must pro-
pose measures to cure defects in the application. §§ C.5.d,
C.5.e. When the basis for denial is prior receipt of a com-
peting application for the same time and place, the Park Dis-
trict must suggest alternative times or places. § C.5.e. An
unsuccessful applicant has seven days to file a written appeal
to the General Superintendent of the Park District, who
must act on the appeal within seven days. § C.6.a. If the
General Superintendent affirms a permit denial, the appli-
cant may seek judicial review in state court by common-law
certiorari. See Norton v. Nicholson, 187 Ill. App. 3d 1046,
1057–1058, 543 N. E. 2d 1053, 1059 (1989).
Petitioners have applied to the Park District on several
occasions for permits to hold rallies advocating the legal-
property and has not paid in full for such damage, or has other
outstanding and unpaid debts to the Park District;
“(6) a fully executed prior application for permit for the same time
and place has been received, and a permit has been or will be
granted to a prior applicant authorizing uses or activities which
do not reasonably permit multiple occupancy of the particular
park or part hereof;
“(7) the use or activity intended by the applicant would conflict with
previously planned programs organized and conducted by the
Park District and previously scheduled for the same time and
place;
“(8) the proposed use or activity is prohibited by or inconsistent with
the classifications and uses of the park or part thereof desig-
nated pursuant to this chapter, Section C.1., above;
“(9) the use or activity intended by the applicant would present an
unreasonable danger to the health or safety of the applicant, or
other users of the park, of Park District Employees or of the
public;
“(10) the applicant has not complied or cannot comply with applicable
licensure requirements, ordinances or regulations of the Park
District concerning the sale or offering for sale of any goods or
services;
“(11) the use or activity intended by the applicant is prohibited by
law, by this Code and ordinances of the Park District, or by the
regulations of the General Superintendent . . . .”

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320 THOMAS v. CHICAGO PARK DIST.
Opinion of the Court
ization of marijuana. The Park District has granted some
permits and denied others. Not satisfied, petitioners filed
an action pursuant to 42 U. S. C. § 1983 in the United States
District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleg-
ing, inter alia, that the Park District’s ordinance is un-
constitutional on its face. The District Court granted sum-
mary judgment in favor of the Park District, and the United
States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed.
227 F. 3d 921 (2000). We granted certiorari. 532 U. S. 1051
(2001).
II
The First Amendment’s guarantee of “the freedom of
speech, or of the press” prohibits a wide assortment of gov-
ernment restraints upon expression, but the core abuse
against which it was directed was the scheme of licensing
laws implemented by the monarch and Parliament to con-
tain the “evils” of the printing press in 16th- and 17-century
England. The Printing Act of 1662 had “prescribed what
could be printed, who could print, and who could sell.”
Mayton, Toward a Theory of First Amendment Process: In-
junctions of Speech, Subsequent Punishment, and the Costs
of the Prior Restraint Doctrine, 67 Cornell L. Rev. 245, 248
(1982). It punished the publication of any book or pamphlet
without a license and required that all works be submitted
for approval to a government official, who wielded broad
authority to suppress works that he found to be “ ‘heretical,
seditious, schismatical, or offensive.’ ” F. Siebert, Freedom
of the Press in England, 1476–1776, p. 240 (1952). The Eng-
lish licensing system expired at the end of the 17th century,
but the memory of its abuses was still vivid enough in colo-
nial times that Blackstone warned against the “restrictive
power” of such a “licenser”—an administrative official who
enjoyed unconfined authority to pass judgment on the con-
tent of speech. 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws
of England 152 (1769).

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Opinion of the Court
In Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U. S. 51 (1965), we con-
fronted a state law that enacted a strikingly similar system
of prior restraint for motion pictures. It required that
every motion picture film be submitted to a Board of Censors
before the film was shown anywhere in the State. The
board enjoyed authority to reject films that it considered
“ ‘obscene’ ” or that “ ‘tend[ed], in the judgment of the Board,
to debase or corrupt morals or incite to crimes,’ ” character-
istics defined by the statute in broad terms. Id., at 52, n. 2.
The statute punished the exhibition of a film not submitted
to the board for advance approval, even where the film would
have received a license had it been properly submitted. It
was no defense that the content of the film was protected by
the First Amendment.
We recognized in Freedman that a scheme conditioning
expression on a licensing body’s prior approval of content
“presents peculiar dangers to constitutionally protected
speech.” Id., at 57. “[T]he censor’s business is to censor,”
ibid., and a licensing body likely will overestimate the dan-
gers of controversial speech when determining, without re-
gard to the film’s actual effect on an audience, whether
speech is likely “ ‘to incite’ ” or to “ ‘corrupt [the] morals,’ ”
id., at 52–53, n. 2. Cf. Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v.
Conrad, 420 U. S. 546, 561, and n. 11 (1975). In response to
these grave “dangers of a censorship system,” Freedman,
supra, at 58, we held that a film licensing process must con-
tain certain procedural safeguards in order to avoid consti-
tuting an invalid prior restraint: “(1) any restraint prior
to judicial review can be imposed only for a specified brief
period during which the status quo must be maintained;
(2) expeditious judicial review of that decision must be avail-
able; and (3) the censor must bear the burden of going to
court to suppress the speech and must bear the burden of
proof once in court.” FW/PBS, Inc. v. Dallas, 493 U. S. 215,
227 (1990) (principal opinion of O’Connor, J., joined by Ste-
vens and Kennedy, JJ.) (citing Freedman, supra, at 58–60).

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322 THOMAS v. CHICAGO PARK DIST.
Opinion of the Court
Petitioners contend that the Park District, like the Board
of Censors in Freedman, must initiate litigation every time
it denies a permit and that the ordinance must specify a
deadline for judicial review of a challenge to a permit denial.
We reject those contentions. Freedman is inapposite be-
cause the licensing scheme at issue here is not subject-
matter censorship but content-neutral time, place, and
manner regulation of the use of a public forum. The Park
District’s ordinance does not authorize a licensor to pass
judgment on the content of speech: None of the grounds for
denying a permit has anything to do with what a speaker
might say. Indeed, the ordinance (unlike the classic censor-
ship scheme) is not even directed to communicative activity
as such, but rather to all activity conducted in a public park.
The picnicker and soccer player, no less than the political
activist or parade marshal, must apply for a permit if the
50-person limit is to be exceeded. And the object of the
permit system (as plainly indicated by the permissible
grounds for permit denial) is not to exclude communication
of a particular content, but to coordinate multiple uses of
limited space, to assure preservation of the park facilities,
to prevent uses that are dangerous, unlawful, or impermis-
sible under the Park District’s rules, and to assure finan-
cial accountability for damage caused by the event. As the
Court of Appeals well put it: “[T]o allow unregulated access
to all comers could easily reduce rather than enlarge the
park’s utility as a forum for speech.” 227 F. 3d, at 924.
We have never required that a content-neutral permit
scheme regulating speech in a public forum adhere to the
procedural requirements set forth in Freedman.2 “A licens-
ing standard which gives an official authority to censor the
content of a speech differs toto coelo from one limited by
its terms, or by nondiscriminatory practice, to considerations
2 FW/PBS, Inc. v. Dallas, 493 U. S. 215, 224 (1990), which applied two of
the Freedman requirements, involved a licensing scheme that “target[ed]
businesses purveying sexually explicit speech.”

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Opinion of the Court
of public safety and the like.” Niemotko v. Maryland, 340
U. S. 268, 282 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring in result).
“[T]he [permit] required is not the kind of prepublication
license deemed a denial of liberty since the time of John
Milton but a ministerial, police routine for adjusting the
rights of citizens so that the opportunity for effective free-
dom of speech may be preserved.” Poulos v. New Hamp-
shire, 345 U. S. 395, 403 (1953). Regulations of the use of a
public forum that ensure the safety and convenience of the
people are not “inconsistent with civil liberties but . . . [are]
one of the means of safeguarding the good order upon which
[civil liberties] ultimately depend.” Cox v. New Hampshire,
312 U. S. 569, 574 (1941). Such a traditional exercise of au-
thority does not raise the censorship concerns that prompted
us to impose the extraordinary procedural safeguards on the
film licensing process in Freedman.
III
Of course even content-neutral time, place, and manner
restrictions can be applied in such a manner as to stifle free
expression. Where the licensing official enjoys unduly broad
discretion in determining whether to grant or deny a permit,
there is a risk that he will favor or disfavor speech based on
its content. See Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement,
505 U. S. 123, 131 (1992). We have thus required that a time,
place, and manner regulation contain adequate standards to
guide the official’s decision and render it subject to effective
judicial review. See Niemotko, supra, at 271. Petitioners
contend that the Park District’s ordinance fails this test.3
3 Petitioners do not argue that the Park District’s ordinance fails to
satisfy other requirements of our time, place, and manner jurisprudence,
under which the permit scheme “must not be based on the content of the
message, must be narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental
interest, and must leave open ample alternatives for communication.”
Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement, 505 U. S. 123, 130 (1992); see
also Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U. S. 288, 293
(1984).

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324 THOMAS v. CHICAGO PARK DIST.
Opinion of the Court
We think not. As we have described, the Park District
may deny a permit only for one or more of the reasons set
forth in the ordinance. See n. 1, supra. It may deny, for
example, when the application is incomplete or contains a
material falsehood or misrepresentation; when the appli-
cant has damaged Park District property on prior occasions
and has not paid for the damage; when a permit has been
granted to an earlier applicant for the same time and place;
when the intended use would present an unreasonable dan-
ger to the health or safety of park users or Park District
employees; or when the applicant has violated the terms of a
prior permit. See Chicago Park Dist. Code, ch. VII, § C.5.e.
Moreover, the Park District must process applications within
28 days, § C.5.c, and must clearly explain its reasons for any
denial, § C.5.e. These grounds are reasonably specific and
objective, and do not leave the decision “to the whim of the
administrator.” Forsyth County, 505 U. S., at 133. They
provide “ ‘narrowly drawn, reasonable and definite stand-
ards’ ” to guide the licensor’s determination, ibid. (quoting
Niemotko, supra, at 271). And they are enforceable on re-
view—first by appeal to the General Superintendent of the
Park District, see Chicago Park Dist. Code, ch. VII, § C.6.a,
and then by writ of common-law certiorari in the Illinois
courts, see Norton v. Nicholson, 187 Ill. App. 3d 1046, 543
N. E. 2d 1053 (1989), which provides essentially the same
type of review as that provided by the Illinois administra-
tive procedure act, see Nowicki v. Evanston Fair Housing
Review Bd., 62 Ill. 2d 11, 14, 338 N. E. 2d 186, 188 (1975).
Petitioners contend that the criteria set forth in the ordi-
nance are insufficiently precise because they are described
as grounds on which the Park District “may” deny a per-
mit, rather than grounds on which it must do so. This, they
contend, allows the Park District to waive the permit re-
quirements for some favored speakers, while insisting upon
them for others. That is certainly not the intent of the ordi-
nance, which the Park District has reasonably interpreted

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Opinion of the Court
to permit overlooking only those inadequacies that, under
the circumstances, do no harm to the policies furthered by
the application requirements. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 31–32.
Granting waivers to favored speakers (or, more precisely,
denying them to disfavored speakers) would of course be
unconstitutional, but we think that this abuse must be
dealt with if and when a pattern of unlawful favoritism ap-
pears, rather than by insisting upon a degree of rigidity that
is found in few legal arrangements. On petitioners’ theory,
every obscenity law, or every law placing limits upon political
expenditures, contains a constitutional flaw, since it merely
permits, but does not require, prosecution. The prophylaxis
achieved by insisting upon a rigid, no-waiver application of
the ordinance requirements would be far outweighed, we
think, by the accompanying senseless prohibition of speech
(and of other activity in the park) by organizations that fail
to meet the technical requirements of the ordinance but for
one reason or another pose no risk of the evils that those
requirements are designed to avoid. On balance, we think
the permissive nature of the ordinance furthers, rather than
constricts, free speech.
* * *
Because the Park District’s ordinance is not subject to
Freedman’s procedural requirements, we do not reach one
of the questions on which we granted certiorari, and on
which the Courts of Appeals are divided: whether the re-
quirement of prompt judicial review means a prompt judicial
determination or the prompt commencement of judicial pro-
ceedings. Compare Nightclubs, Inc. v. Paducah, 202 F. 3d
884, 892–893 (CA6 2000); Baby Tam & Co. v. Las Vegas, 154
F. 3d 1097, 1101 (CA9 1998); 11126 Baltimore Blvd., Inc. v.
Prince George’s County, 58 F. 3d 988, 998–1001 (CA4 1995)
(en banc), with Boss Capital, Inc. v. Casselberry, 187 F. 3d
1251, 1255–1257 (CA11 1999); TK’s Video, Inc. v. Denton
County, 24 F. 3d 705, 709 (CA5 1994); Graff v. Chicago, 9

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326 THOMAS v. CHICAGO PARK DIST.
Opinion of the Court
F. 3d 1309, 1324–1325 (CA7 1993) (en banc); Jews for Jesus,
Inc. v. Massachusetts Bay Transp. Authority, 984 F. 2d 1319,
1327 (CA1 1993). For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the
judgment of the Court of Appeals.
It is so ordered.