Bachellar v. Maryland

Background

A group of antiwar protesters staged a demonstration in front of a U.S. Army recruiting station on a downtown Baltimore street on the afternoon of March 28, 1966. They began peacefully, marching on the sidewalk with signs and distributing leaflets; the crowd grew to about 30–40 people with onlookers nearby. Six protesters later went into the recruiting station, staged a sit-in after being refused permission to display materials, and were removed by marshals and deputized police. There is conflicting testimony about whether the protesters blocked the sidewalk or were thrown outside and held down by officers, but they sang and remained part of the demonstration afterward.

Reasoning

The central question was whether the convictions rested on constitutionally protected speech or on disorderly conduct that actually disrupted public passage or safety. The trial judge instructed the jury on multiple alternative grounds: that the protesters’ words or conduct might have offended or incited bystanders, or that they had refused a police command to move and thus endangered the peace. The jury returned a general guilty verdict, so the Court could not tell which ground the jury relied on. Because the record showed the protesters might have been convicted solely for their unpopular views, the Court held that those convictions could not stand and reversed them.

Real world impact

The decision protects street demonstrations from being punished simply because bystanders were offended. It requires that convictions rest on concrete disruptive conduct (like actual obstruction), not on the content of the protesters’ ideas. The Court set aside the convictions and sent the case back for further proceedings consistent with this ruling.