Braxton v. Municipal Court

In Braxton v. Municipal Court (1973) 10 Cal.3d 138, the California Supreme Court addressed Penal Code section 626.4, which provided in part: "'The chief administrative officer of a campus or other facility of a community college, state college, or state university, or an officer or employee designated by him to maintain order on such campus or facility, may notify a person that consent to remain on the campus or other facility under the control of the chief administrative officer has been withdrawn whenever there is reasonable cause to believe that such person has willfully disrupted the orderly operation of such campus or facility.'" (Braxton, at p. 142, fn. 1.) Braxton construed section 626.4 narrowly to avoid finding it an overbroad prohibition of constitutionally protected speech or conduct. Braxton noted that "the statute, if literally applied, would succumb to constitutional attack both because of First Amendment overbreadth and vagueness": the expression "'willfully disrupted the orderly operation of the campus'" would "include many forms of constitutionally protected expression and risk a chilling of free speech." (Braxton, supra, 10 Cal.3d at p. 144.) However, "a narrower interpretation will both effectuate the legislative purpose of the statute and confine it within constitutional parameters." (Ibid.) The court explained that "the purpose of the legislation is to provide a swift remedy, by means of exclusion from the campus, of those students who commit overt acts of violence or otherwise engage in illegal conduct which disrupts 'the orderly operation of such campus.' This remedy affords an alternative, supplementary, and often less onerous procedure than criminal prosecution." (Braxton, supra, 10 Cal.3d at p. 144.) Therefore, "to confine the statute within constitutional limits and to avoid the penalization of free speech, we interpret the words 'willfully disrupted' to apply in a limited situation consistent with the legislative purpose. In authorizing temporary banishment, the Legislature, we believe, sought to draw a line between (1) physically disruptive conduct, otherwise proscribed by statute, which in an emergency situation 'constitutes a substantial and material threat to the orderly operation of the campus' ( 626.4, subd. (c)), and (2) the lawful exercise of free speech and other First Amendment liberties. We think the Legislature distinguished, in substance, between lawful peaceful persuasion and unlawful physical coercion." (Braxton, supra, 10 Cal.3d at p. 144.) In short, "in order to avoid the constitutional overbreadth that a literal construction of the statute would entail, we interpret the statute to prohibit only incitement to violence or conduct physically incompatible with the peaceful functioning of the campus." (Id. at p. 150.)