City of Chicago v. Morales

United States Supreme Court
527 U.S. 41 (1999)

ELI5:

Rule of Law:

A criminal law is unconstitutionally vague under the Due Process Clause if it fails to provide ordinary people with adequate notice of what conduct is prohibited and fails to establish minimal guidelines to govern law enforcement, thereby authorizing or encouraging arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.

Facts:

In response to rising gang-related violence and intimidation, the Chicago City Council held hearings where residents described being terrorized by gang members congregating in public spaces.
The Council found that street gangs establish control over areas by loitering, intimidating law-abiding citizens and creating a justifiable fear for public safety.
In 1992, the City of Chicago enacted the Gang Congregation Ordinance, which prohibited 'criminal street gang members' from 'loitering' with other persons in any public place.
The ordinance defined 'loiter' as 'to remain in any one place with no apparent purpose.'
Under the ordinance, a police officer who reasonably believed a person was a gang member loitering with others was required to order all such persons to disperse.
Any person, whether a gang member or not, who disobeyed the dispersal order was subject to arrest and penalties including fines, imprisonment, and community service.
The Chicago Police Department promulgated General Order 92-4 to guide enforcement, which included criteria for identifying gang members and limiting enforcement to specific, non-publicly disclosed 'designated areas.'
During a three-year period, police issued over 89,000 dispersal orders and made over 42,000 arrests under the ordinance, including the arrests of respondents Morales, Youkhana, and Gutierrez.

Procedural Posture:

Jesus Morales and other respondents were charged in Illinois trial courts with violating Chicago's Gang Congregation Ordinance.
The trial courts reached conflicting results; in respondent Youkhana's case, the trial court held the ordinance was unconstitutional.
On appeal by the City of Chicago, the Illinois Appellate Court affirmed the trial court's finding of unconstitutionality and reversed the convictions of other respondents.
The City of Chicago appealed to the Supreme Court of Illinois.
The Supreme Court of Illinois, as the state's highest court, affirmed the appellate court, holding that the ordinance was impermissibly vague on its face and thus violated due process.
The City of Chicago petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, which was granted.

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Issue:

Does the City of Chicago's Gang Congregation Ordinance, which criminalizes the act of loitering in a public place with a suspected gang member after a police officer has ordered dispersal, violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment on the grounds that it is impermissibly vague?

Opinions:

Majority - Justice Stevens

Yes. The Chicago Gang Congregation Ordinance violates the Due Process Clause because it is unconstitutionally vague. The ordinance fails both to provide adequate notice of prohibited conduct and to establish minimal guidelines for law enforcement. The freedom to loiter for innocent purposes is a liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause. The ordinance's definition of loitering—remaining in one place with 'no apparent purpose'—is inherently ambiguous and fails to give ordinary citizens fair notice of what is forbidden. It is impossible for a person to know if they have an 'apparent purpose' in the eyes of an officer. Furthermore, this standard provides absolute discretion to police, allowing them to make 'moment-to-moment judgments' about what conduct is permissible, which invites arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement. The requirement of a dispersal order does not cure this vagueness, as the order itself is based on the vague premise of loitering and is issued after the allegedly prohibited conduct has already occurred.

Concurring - Justice O’Connor

Yes. The ordinance is unconstitutionally vague because it lacks sufficient minimal guidelines to govern law enforcement. As construed by the Illinois Supreme Court, the ordinance gives police 'absolute discretion' to determine whether a person has an 'apparent purpose.' This allows officers to order dispersal at their whim, targeting not only gang members but also hundreds of thousands of non-gang members engaged in innocent activity. The ordinance could have been constitutional if it were more narrowly tailored, such as applying only to individuals reasonably believed to be gang members or by defining loitering to include a harmful purpose like intimidation.

Concurring - Justice Kennedy

Yes. The ordinance is unconstitutional because it fails to provide adequate notice to citizens. A person engaged in innocent conduct is not likely to know that they may be subject to a dispersal order based on an officer's private knowledge of the affiliations of other people in their group. The vague predicate for the order—loitering with no apparent purpose—is insufficient to eliminate these doubts about whether one's conduct is prohibited.

Concurring - Justice Breyer

Yes. The ordinance is unconstitutional because it delegates 'virtually standardless discretion' to police officers to control the movement of innocent people in public spaces. Since every application of the ordinance involves this exercise of unlimited discretion, the ordinance is invalid in all its applications. It is unconstitutional not because it provides insufficient notice in a particular case, but because the police enjoy too much discretion in every case.

Dissenting - Justice Scalia

No. The ordinance is a reasonable and constitutional measure to address gang violence. The majority improperly invalidates the ordinance on a facial challenge, as there are many conceivable situations where its application would be valid. The ordinance is not vague; the punishable act is the willful failure to obey a clear police order to disperse, not the act of loitering itself. Furthermore, there is no constitutionally protected, fundamental 'right to loiter'.

Dissenting - Justice Thomas

No. The ordinance is a constitutional exercise of the city's police power to protect its citizens from the terror of gang violence. The asserted 'freedom to loiter for innocent purposes' is not deeply rooted in the Nation's history and tradition; to the contrary, anti-loitering and vagrancy laws have a long history in Anglo-American law. The ordinance is not vague; it provides police with necessary and appropriate discretion to fulfill their traditional peacekeeping function. By striking down the ordinance, the Court prioritizes the imagined rights of gang members over the safety and well-being of law-abiding residents in high-crime neighborhoods.

Analysis:

This decision reinforces the constitutional requirement that criminal statutes must be written with sufficient clarity to prevent arbitrary enforcement by police. By recognizing a protected liberty interest in 'loitering for innocent purposes,' the Court placed significant constraints on the government's ability to enact broad, status-based public order offenses. The ruling forces legislatures to draft anti-gang and public safety laws that are narrowly tailored to target specific, harmful conduct rather than granting police sweeping authority to criminalize innocuous behavior. The case stands as a key precedent in vagueness jurisprudence, emphasizing that the need to fight crime does not override the due process requirements of fair notice and constrained police discretion.

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