DAY

v.

JOHNSTON

THIS CAUSE is before the Court on Plaintiff Andrew T. Day’s Motion for Temporary Restraining Order or Other Injunctive Relief (Doc. No. 8), filed December 22, 2020. The Court has carefully considered the entire record filed as of December 29, 2020. The Plaintiff, and indeed the entire case, impelled expedited court consideration of the merits of the case, as set forth by Plaintiff after joint consultation with attorneys for all parties. Oral argument via Zoom was scheduled for December 29, 2020 as the earliest possible date that accommodation of the urgency would permit. The Court held full and complete oral argument as scheduled on December 29, 2020.

I. BACKGROUND

On December 21, 2020, Plaintiff filed the above-styled action seeking to enjoin the City of Key West from enforcing a citywide curfew around the upcoming New Year’s holiday. Specifically, Plaintiff seeks to enjoin on constitutional grounds the implementation and enforcement of Emergency Directive 2020-20 (the “Directive”), issued by City of Key West Mayor Teri Johnston on December⁴, 2020.1 In pertinent part, the Directive provides: Commencing on Thursday, December 31, 2020 at 10:00 p.m. and terminating on Sunday, January³, 2021 at 6:00 a.m., a curfew is hereby imposed for the City of Key West, effective from 10:00 p.m. each night through 6:00 a.m. the next morning. All non-essential businesses shall close on or before 10:00 p.m. each night. Persons shall be in residences or lodging establishments no later than 10:30 p.m. each night. During the period of such curfew, no person shall make use of any street or sidewalk for any purpose, except police, fire rescue, first responder, medical, health care, media, and utility service personnel. See Directive, Doc. No. 12-1 ¶ C.

The stated goal of the Directive is to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) by preventing large crowds of people from gathering in downtown Key West on Duval and adjoining streets in the traditional New Year’s Eve festivities. Id. at 2. Plaintiff, a lawful resident of Key West, Florida, maintains that the Directive infringes on his constitutional rights of freedom of speech, travel, and freedom of assembly in violation of the First Amendment and 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

Accordingly, Plaintiff requests a Temporary Restraining Order against the enforcement of the Directive. See Docs. No. 8, 13.

Plaintiff seeks expedited review of his application since the New Year’s holiday is rapidly approaching. See Compl. ¶ 9. For the reasons stated herein, the Court finds that Plaintiff’s Motion should be denied and injunction against the Mayor’s Directive should not issue.

III. DISCUSSION

On December 22, 2020, the Court held a joint telephonic status conference with counsel for each side to discuss expedited procedure governing this case. The City Attorney for the City of Key West entered a Notice of Appearance later that day, indicating that he represented all three defendants in this action.

Thus, since Defendants have received notice, the Court will treat Plaintiff’s request for a temporary restraining order as a request for a preliminary injunction. Whether Plaintiff is entitled to a preliminary injunction turns on two questions: (1) whether Plaintiff has suffered an “injury-in-fact” sufficient to confer Article III standing, and (2) whether

Plaintiff has established a likelihood of success on the merits under the “intermediate scrutiny” test applicable to content-neutral regulations of speech. The Court concludes that Plaintiff has standing to bring this action but has failed to establish the likelihood that he will prevail on the merits for injunctive relief.

A. Whether Plaintiff Has Standing

Federal courts may only decide “Cases” and “Controversies” under Article III of the United States Constitution. U.S. Const. art. III, § 2; Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992). “One element of the case-or-controversy requirement is that plaintiffs must establish that they have standing to sue.” Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U.S. 398, 408 (2013). According to the Supreme Court:

[T]he irreducible constitutional minimum of standing contains three elements. First, the plaintiff must have suffered an “injury in fact”—an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized; and (b) “actual or imminent, not ‘conjectural’ or ‘hypothetical.’” Second, there must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of—the injury has to be “fairly ... trace[able] to the challenged action of the defendant, and not ... th[e] result [of] the independent action of some third party not before the court.” Third, it must be “likely,” as opposed to merely “speculative,” that the injury will be “redressed by a favorable decision.” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560–61 (citations omitted).

“Standing to bring and maintain a lawsuit is a fundamental component of a federal court's subject matter jurisdiction.” Torres v. Wendy’s Co., 195 F. Supp. 3d 1278, 1281 (M.D. Fla. 2016). “[A] [federal] court should inquire into whether it has subject matter jurisdiction at the earliest possible stage in the proceedings. Indeed, it is well settled that a federal court is obligated to inquire into subject matter jurisdiction sua sponte whenever it may be lacking.” University of South Ala. v. Am. Tobacco Co., 168 F. 3d 405, 410 (11th Cir. 1999). Here, Plaintiff argues that he has standing as a resident of the City of Key West who is subject to the Mayor’s Directive. In his Verified Affidavit, Plaintiff attests that he has “personal knowledge of [his] activities, [his] travels, and [his] intentions to move about alone and/or with [his] wife and two children and to meet and freely converse with other friends, associates and others and to peacefully assemble in legally accessible pubic locations.” Day Aff., App. 1, Doc. No. 10-1. And since the Directive prohibits this kind of speech and assembly, Plaintiff contends that he has standing to sue. The Court agrees. Although Plaintiff has not suffered an injury-in-fact as of yet, Plaintiff has articulated a threatened injury that is sufficiently imminent to satisfy Article III’s case-or-controversy requirement. See, e.g., MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., 549 U.S. 118, 128–129 (2007) (“[W]here threatened action by government is concerned, we do not require a plaintiff to expose himself to liability before bringing suit to challenge the basis for the threat— for example, the constitutionality of a law threatened to be enforced.”); Steffel v. Thompson, 415

U.S. 452, 459 (1974) (“[I]t is not necessary that petitioner first expose himself to actual arrest or prosecution to be entitled to challenge a statute that he claims deters the exercise of his constitutional rights.”); Harrell v. The Florida Bar, 608 F. 3d 1241, 1254 (11th Cir. 2010) (“Under controlling case law, we apply the injury-in-fact requirement most loosely where First Amendment rights are involved, lest free speech be chilled even before the law or regulation is enforced.”).

B. Whether an Injunction Should Issue

Having subject matter jurisdiction, the Court now considers whether Plaintiff is entitled to an injunction. To obtain a preliminary injunction, Plaintiff must demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits. After careful consideration, the Court concludes that Plaintiff has not established this requisite element to entitle him to a temporary restraining order or other injunctive relief. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The First Amendment is applicable to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 364–65 (1937) (incorporating right of assembly); Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, 666 (1925) (incorporating right of freedom of speech).

The right to free speech is fundamental to our nation’s concept of ordered liberty. This is no less true during a pandemic. But where a government regulates speech without reference to the content of the speech, the traditional strict scrutiny does not apply. Instead, courts review these “time, place, and manner” regulations with intermediate scrutiny: the government must show (1) a substantial government interest, (2) the regulations are narrowly tailored to serve that interest,

and (3) the regulations leave open ample alternative channels of communication of the information.² McCullen v. Coakley, 573 U.S. 464, 478 (2014) (citing Ward v. Rock Against

The Court finds that Avino is inapposite since COVID-19, while deadly and severe, does not present the same concerns of looting, chaos, and violence during riots that may result from a natural disaster. Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 791 (1989)).

Content-neutral regulations of the right of assembly are also reviewed with intermediate scrutiny. See Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474, 484 (1988).

Here, the City of Key West has a substantial government interest in preserving and protecting the public health of its citizens. In the Directive, the Mayor observes that “COVID-19 is a severe acute respiratory illness that can spread among humans through respiratory transmission and causes symptoms similar to those of influenza and, in some cases, cause death.” Doc. No. 12- 1 at 1. The Mayor also observes that the Centers for Disease Control (“CDC”) has cautioned against large gatherings of people to avoid spreading COVID-19 at these events, and that large crowds have gathered on Duval Street to celebrate the New Year’s holiday in the past. See id. at 1–2. If “stemming the spread of COVID–19 is unquestionably a compelling [government] interest” as the Supreme Court has held,³ it is most certainly a substantial government interest as well. See, e.g., Turner Broadcasting Sys., Inc. v. F.C.C., 512 U.S. 622, 641–42 (1994) (requiring a “compelling” government interest under strict scrutiny review, but only requiring a “substantial” government interest under intermediate scrutiny review).

The Court also finds that the Directive is narrowly tailored to serve the City of Key West’s interest in protecting public health. “[T]he requirement of narrow tailoring is satisfied ‘so long as the . . . regulation promotes a substantial government interest that would be achieved less effectively absent the regulation.’” Ward, 491 U.S. at 799 (quoting United States v. Albertini, 472 U.S. 675, 689 (1985)). Here, the Directive prohibits public gatherings from 10:00 PM on December 31, 2020 until 6:00 AM on January¹, 2021, and it continues for the following two evenings, terminating at 6:00 AM on January³, 2021. It restricts public speech and assembly for

Moreover, the City has exempted essential businesses and religious services from the curfew. And while Plaintiff contends there are less restrictive means to accomplish the City’s goal, “a regulation of the time, place, or manner of protected speech must be narrowly tailored to serve the government’s legitimate, content-neutral interests but [] it need not be the least restrictive or least intrusive means of doing so.” Ward, 491 U.S. at 798 (emphasis added).

Finally, the Court finds that the Directive leaves open ample alternative channels of communication of information. While Plaintiff may not be free to speak with friends and associates in public places as he normally would, Plaintiff may still voice his displeasure on any social media platform and reach what is potentially a larger audience for his desired speech, just as Plaintiff may use social media and technology to virtually “assemble” with friends and colleagues during this very brief period of time. To be clear, the Court is not suggesting that in-person public speech may always be prohibited so long as the speaker can use social media to express his or her views. On the contrary, the Court is finding that in this narrow circumstance where the City has a substantial interest in protecting public health, Plaintiff has an alternative way to express his

IV. CONCLUSION

The City of Key West has a substantial government interest in preserving and protecting the health of its citizens. The Key West Emergency Directive is narrowly tailored to an eight-hour period covering three evenings, and it leaves open ample alternative modes of communication and assembly. The Directive therefore survives intermediate scrutiny.

Accordingly, itis ORDERED, ADJUDGED, and DECREED that Plaintiff's Application for a Temporary Restraining Order or Other Injunctive Relief be, and the same is, hereby

DENIED.

DONE AND ORDERED in Chambers at the James Lawrence King Federal Justice Building and United States Courthouse, Miami, Florida this 29th day of December, 2020.

eens VuHines f\ mg of JAMES LAWRENCE KING A Loomer yo UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE cc: _— All counsel of record