December 2015 - Parks & Recreation - 32

L AW R E V I E W

2401 simply made that prohibition
applicable to all of Santa Monica's
parks at all times.
Second, Ordinance 2401 conserved
the city's resources. Prior to 2011,
coordinating the Winter Displays in
Palisades Park had been an easy task
for the city's staff. In 2011, however,
the staff spent " hundreds of hours "
administering the lottery system, and
all indications were that the system
would become more time-consuming
in the future as the number of applications for space increased. It was permissible for the city to seek to alleviate
this burden on its employees' time.
Narrow Tailoring
In the opinion of the federal appeals
court, the challenged ordinance was
also " narrowly tailored " to achieve the
above-noted significant governmental interests. According to the court,
the ordinance unquestionably " furthers the city's interests in preserving
the aesthetics of Palisades Park and
conserving city resources. " Moreover,

30 Parks & Recreation

the court found the ordinance did not
" burden substantially more speech
than necessary " because the ordinance
" affected only unattended displays "
that " require laborious permitting in
ways that other forms of speech, even
attended displays, usually do not. "
In response, the committee pointed
out " several steps that the city could
have taken to address the problems
it identified, short of repealing the
Winter Display exception. " As noted by the federal appeals court, such
" observations are irrelevant to the
question of narrow tailoring. "
A time, place and manner regulation need not be the least restrictive
or least intrusive means of furthering the government's interests in order to be narrowly tailored. Rather,
narrow tailoring requires only that
a regulation promote substantial
government interest that would
be achieved less effectively absent
the regulation and not burden substantially more speech than is necessary to further that interest.

| D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 5 | W W W. N R PA . O R G

Alternative Channels of
Communication
Having found the challenged ordinance
satisfied the " narrow tailoring requirement, " the federal appeals court also
found the challenged ordinance " leaves
open ample alternative channels of
communication. " In the opinion of
the court, " many alternative avenues "
existed for the committee to " communicate its religious message " after the
city excluded unattended displays from
its parks. As noted by the court, the
committee could " erect its unattended
nativity scenes on private property. "
According to the court, the committee
could also " speak in many other ways
in Palisades Park, including erecting
one-day, attended displays, leafleting,
preaching, holding signs and caroling. "
The committee, however, found these
" alternative channels of communication " were inadequate to reach their
intended audience, i.e., visitors to Palisades Park. For the committee, Palisades Park was " the optimum location for reaching the greatest number

December 2015 - Parks & Recreation

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