447 U.S. 455 (1980)
The Illinois residential picketing statute generally bars picketing of residences or dwellings but exempts from its prohibition the peaceful picketing of a place of employment involved in a labor dispute.1 It also exempts picketing of a residence used as a place of business, picketing by a resident of his or her own home, and picketing at the place of holding a meeting or assembly on premises commonly used to discuss subjects of general public interest.2
On September 6, 1977, several of the appellees, all of whom are members of a civil rights organization entitled the Committee Against Racism, participated in a peaceful demonstration on the public sidewalk in front of the home of Michael Bilandic, then Mayor of Chicago, protesting his alleged failure to support the busing of schoolchildren to achieve racial integration.3 They were arrested and charged with unlawful residential picketing in violation of Ill. Rev. Stat., ch. 38, § 21.1-2 (1977).4 Appellees pleaded guilty to the charge and were sentenced to periods of supervision ranging from six months to a year.5
In April 1978, appellees commenced this lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, seeking a declaratory judgment that the Illinois residential picketing statute is unconstitutional on its face and as applied, and an injunction prohibiting defendants from enforcing the statute.6 Appellees did not attempt to attack collaterally their earlier state-court convictions, but requested only prospective relief.7 The District Court, ruling on cross-motions for summary judgment, denied all relief.8
The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed.9 The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction.10
Whether the Illinois residential picketing statute, which generally prohibits picketing of residences but exempts peaceful picketing of a place of employment involved in a labor dispute, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?11
When government regulation discriminates among speech-related activities in a public forum, the Equal Protection Clause mandates that the legislation be finely tailored to serve substantial state interests, and the justifications offered for any distinctions it draws must be carefully scrutinized.12
Yes. The statute discriminates between lawful and unlawful conduct based upon the content of the demonstrator's communication by exempting labor picketing while prohibiting the peaceful demonstration by the Committee Against Racism at Mayor Bilandic's home on the subject of school busing.13 The statute accords preferential treatment to the expression of views on one particular subject.14 Information about labor disputes may be freely disseminated, but discussion of all other issues is restricted.15
The permissibility of residential picketing under the Illinois statute is thus dependent solely on the nature of the message being conveyed.16
The statute violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.17
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Stewart concurred in the opinion and judgment of the Court.18 He observed that the opinion invokes the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as the basis of decision.19 What was actually at stake in Mosley and is at stake here is the basic meaning of the constitutional protection of free speech.20
He emphasized that a municipality may not discriminate in the regulation of expression on the basis of the content of that expression under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.21
Joined by The Chief Justice And Mr. Justice Blackmun
Justice Rehnquist dissented.22 He argued that the Court's paraphrasing of the statute was inaccurate because the statute exempts four categories of residences from the general ban on residential picketing, not merely labor picketing.23 The principal determinant of a person's right to picket a residence in Illinois is the character of the residence sought to be picketed rather than content alone.24
He maintained that the statute constitutes a valid time, place, and manner restriction that satisfies First Amendment and equal protection principles.25
The exclusion for labor picketing cannot be upheld as a means of protecting residential privacy because nothing in the content-based labor-nonlabor distinction has any bearing whatsoever on privacy.28 Nothing inherent in the nature of peaceful labor picketing makes it any less disruptive of residential privacy than peaceful picketing on issues of broader social concern.29
No. The exclusion for labor picketing cannot be upheld as a means of protecting residential privacy because nothing in the content-based labor-nonlabor distinction has any bearing whatsoever on privacy. Appellant can point to nothing inherent in the nature of peaceful labor picketing that would make it any less disruptive of residential privacy than peaceful picketing on issues of broader social concern such as the appellees' demonstration protesting the Mayor's alleged failure to support school busing. The generalized classification which the statute draws suggests that Illinois itself has determined that residential privacy is not a transcendent objective because while broadly permitting all peaceful labor picketing the statute makes no attempt to distinguish among sorts of nonlabor picketing on the basis of the harms they would inflict on the privacy interest.30
The state's interest in protecting residential privacy does not justify the statute's differential treatment of labor and nonlabor picketing.31
Whether the statute's differential treatment of labor and nonlabor picketing is justified by the state's interest in providing special protection for labor protests?32
The central difficulty with the argument that the statute furthers the state's interest in providing special protection for labor protests is that it presupposes that labor picketing is more deserving of First Amendment protection than are public protests over other issues, a proposition that must be rejected because public-issue picketing has always rested on the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values.3334
No. The central difficulty with this argument is that it forthrightly presupposes that labor picketing is more deserving of First Amendment protection than are public protests over other issues, particularly the important economic, social, and political subjects about which these appellees wish to demonstrate.35 Public-issue picketing has always rested on the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values. While the State's motivation in protecting the First Amendment rights of employees involved in labor disputes is commendable that factor without more cannot justify the labor picketing exemption.36 The attempt to justify the statute as a reasonable attempt to accommodate the competing rights of the homeowner to enjoy his privacy and the employee to demonstrate over labor disputes hinges on the validity of both of these goals, and the desire to favor one form of speech over all others is illegitimate.37
The state's interest in providing special protection for labor protests does not justify the statute's differential treatment of labor and nonlabor picketing.38