A municipal ordinance which is so construed and applied as to
penalize a minister of Jehovah's Witnesses for preaching at a
peaceful religious meeting in a public park, although other
religious groups could conduct religious services there with
impunity, violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the
Federal Constitution. Pp.
345 U. S.
67-70.
80 R.I. ___,
91
A.2d 27, reversed.
Appellant's conviction for violation of a municipal ordinance
was affirmed by the State Supreme Court. 80 R.I. ___,
91 A.2d
27. On appeal to this Court under 28 U.S.C. § 1257(2),
reversed and remanded, p.
345 U. S.
70.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court.
The City of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, has an ordinance which
reads as follows:
"SEC. 11. No person shall address any political or religious
meeting in any public park; but this section shall not be construed
to prohibit any political or religious club or society from
visiting any public park in a body, provided that no public address
shall be made under the auspices of such club or society in such
park."
Jehovah's Witnesses, a religious sect, assembled in Slater Park
of Pawtucket for a meeting which, at the
Page 345 U. S. 68
trial, was conceded to be religious in character. About 400
people attended, 150 being Jehovah's Witnesses. Appellant is a
minister of this sect, residing in Arlington, Mass. He was invited
to Pawtucket as a visiting minister to give a talk before the
Pawtucket congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses. Appellant accepted
the invitation, attended the meeting in the park, and addressed it
over two loudspeakers. It was a quiet, orderly meeting, with no
disturbances or breaches of the peace whatsoever.
Appellant's address was entitled "The Pathway to Peace." He
discussed the futility of efforts being made to establish peace in
the world. And then, according to his uncontradicted testimony,
he
"launched forth into the scriptural evidence to show where we
were on the string of time; that we hard reached the end of this
wicked system of things."
Appellant had been talking only a few minutes when he was
arrested by the police and charged with violating the ordinance set
forth above. He was tried and found guilty over objections that the
ordinance, as so construed and applied, violated the First and the
Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. He was fined $5. His
conviction was affirmed by the Rhode Island Supreme Court.
91 A.2d
27.
And see Fowler v. State, 83 A.2d
67, an earlier opinion answering certified questions and
holding the ordinance valid. The case is here on appeal. 28 U.S.C.
§ 1257(2).
Davis v. Massachusetts, 167 U. S.
43, decided in 1897, sustained a conviction of a man for
making a speech on the Boston Commons in violation of an ordinance
that forbade the making of a public address there without a permit
from the mayor. Much of the oral argument and most of the briefs
have been devoted, on the one hand, to a defense of the
Davis case, and, on the other hand, to an attack on it.
Analyses of subsequent decisions have been
Page 345 U. S. 69
submitted in an effort either to demonstrate that the
Davis case is today good law, or to show that it has been
so qualified as no longer to have any vitality. We are invited by
appellant to overrule it; we are asked by respondent to reaffirm
it.
We put to one side the problems presented by the
Davis
case and its offspring. For there is one aspect of the present case
that, undercuts all others and makes it necessary for us to reverse
the judgment. As we have said, it was conceded at the trial that
this meeting was a religious one. On oral argument before the
Court, the Assistant Attorney General further conceded that the
ordinance, as construed and applied, did not prohibit church
services in the park. Catholics could hold mass in Slater Park and
Protestants could conduct their church services there without
violating the ordinance. Church services normally entail not only
singing, prayer, and other devotionals, but preaching as well. Even
so, those services would not be barred by the ordinance. That broad
concession, made in oral argument, is fatal to Rhode Island's case.
For it plainly shows that a religious service of Jehovah's
Witnesses is treated differently than a religious service of other
sects. That amounts to the state preferring some religious groups
over this one. In
Niemotko v. Maryland, 340 U.
S. 268,
340 U. S.
272-273, we had a case on all fours with this one.
There, a public park, open to all religious groups, was denied
Jehovah's Witnesses because of the dislike which the local
officials had of these people and their views. That was a
discrimination which we held to be barred by the First and
Fourteenth Amendments.
Appellant's sect has conventions that are different from the
practices of other religious groups. Its religious service is less
ritualistic, more unorthodox, less formal than some. But, apart
from narrow exceptions not relevant here,
Reynolds v. United
States, 98 U. S. 145;
Davis v.
Page 345 U. S. 70
Beason, 133 U. S. 333, it
is no business of courts to say that what is a religious practice
or activity for one group is not religion under the protection of
the First Amendment. Nor is it in the competence of courts under
our constitutional scheme to approve, disapprove, classify,
regulate, or in any manner control sermons delivered at religious
meetings. Sermons are as much a part of a religious service as
prayers. They cover a wide range and have as great a diversity as
the Bible or other Holy Book from which they commonly take their
texts. To call the words which one minister speaks to his
congregation a sermon, immune from regulation, and the words of
another minister an address, subject to regulation, is merely an
indirect way of preferring one religion over another. That would be
precisely the effect here if we affirmed this conviction in the
face of the concession made during oral argument. Baptist,
Methodist, Presbyterian, or Episcopal ministers, Catholic priests,
Moslem mullahs, Buddhist monks could all preach to their
congregations in Pawtucket's parks with impunity. But the hand of
the law would be laid on the shoulder of a minister of this
unpopular group for performing the same function.
The judgment is reversed, and the cause is remanded to the
Supreme Court of Rhode Island for proceedings not inconsistent with
this opinion.
Reversed.
MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER concurs in the opinion of the Court,
except insofar as it may derive support from the First Amendment.
For him it is the "Equal Protection of the Laws" Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment that condemns the Pawtucket ordinance as
applied in this case.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON concurs in the result.