First Amendment Attorney John Weston testified before the CA Legislature on 4/27/99 regarding SB 1165, the proposed Prompt Judicial Review Bill.
Simply put, the bill creates an expedited hearing process for judicial appeal of local administrative permitting actions which affect expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment. During his opposition presentation, Mr. Weston made several suggestions on how to make the bill better.
John suggested that we expand the date a local administrative decision regarding the issuance, revocation, suspension or denial of a permit for activities involving expressive conduct must be brought from 7 days to 21 days, and the committee adopted the amendment. Weston's next amendment was to limit the bill to apply the expedited review process only to denial of new permit applications, and not for suspension or revocation of existing permits.
The weight of Mr.Weston's position on behalf of the industry was perfectly outlined in the committee analysis which stated: "There is no constitutional purpose to be reserved by extending the provisions of the bill to rulings which review the revocation or suspension of an existing First Amendment-type permit. The reason for that is that, as a constitutional matter, there may be no immediate enforcement of an administrative revocation or suspension order prior to Judicial review. This is because as far back as Freedman v. Maryland, the US Supreme Court expressly held that administrative agencies reviewing permits in the First Amendment area may not alter the status quo prior to judicial review of their actions."
After adopting the amendments, the committee adopted the bill and sent it to the full house. We'll continue to work with the Author's office to make additional amendments. - Mike Ross
