(Florida) Supreme Court strikes down loud-stereo law

[happyslug]

8. Actual Decision, if you want to read it

http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/decisions/2012/sc11-1166.pdf

We also find that the statute is unconstitutionally over-broad, but not unconstitutionally vague.

The key to the courts decision was the EXCEPTION to the general rule, the general rule forbade:

It is unlawful for any person operating or occupying a motor vehicle on a street or highway to operate or amplify the sound produced by a radio, tape player, or other mechanical sound making device or instrument from within the motor vehicle so that the sound is:
(a) Plainly audible at a distance of 25 feet or more from the motor vehicle; or
(b) Louder than necessary for the convenient hearing by persons inside the vehicle in areas adjoining churches, schools, or hospitals.

Then goes into a list of exceptions (including emergency vehicles, Police, fire, Ambulances) AND the following:

(3) The provisions of this section do not apply to motor vehicles used for business or political purposes, which in the normal course of conducting such business use sound making devices. The provisions of this subsection shall not be deemed to prevent local authorities, with respect to streets and highways under their jurisdiction and within the reasonable exercise of the police power, from regulating the time and manner in which such business may be operated.

Without Section 3, the court would have UPHELD the statute. The problem with Subsection (3) is that it included the term "Business" along with "Political". Without that paragraph the court would have made an exception for Political speed and thus would have upheld it as constitutional with an exception for political speech (even if the exception is a Judaical made exception). By including the term "Business" which the courts points out refers to "Commercial Speech" which the US Supreme Court has long ruled has less "free speech" rights then other types of speech (You can NOT lie about something you selling and call it "free speech", on the other hand, you can lie about Political issues).

Thus the key is NOT the noise or the sound, but that COMMERCIAL SPEECH was included in the EXCEPTIONS to the ban. Had the exceptions NOT included Commercial Speech, the court would have upheld the law.