Edwards, et al. v. DC

Appellants filed suit challenging the District's tour-guide licensing scheme as an unconstitutional, content-based restriction of their First Amendment rights. The court concluded that it need not determine whether strict scrutiny applied in this instance because, assuming the regulations are content-neutral, they failed even under the more lenient standard of intermediate scrutiny. The District failed to present any evidence the problems it sought to thwart actually exist; even assuming those harms are real, there is no evidence the exam requirement is an appropriately tailored antidote; the district court provided no explanation for abjuring the less restrictive but more effective means of accomplishing its objectives; because this lack of narrow tailoring is hardly unique to appellants, and the court sustained both their facial and as-applied challenges to the offending regulations. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the District and remanded with instructions to grant appellants' motion for summary judgment. View "Edwards, et al. v. DC" on Justia Law