City of Chicago v. Morales
The Supreme Court struck down Chicago's Gang Congregation Ordinance, which let police order any group of people to disperse if an officer believed one of them was a gang member and thought the group had 'no apparent purpose' for being there. The Court agreed with the Illinois Supreme Court that the law was unconstitutionally vague.
The ruling matters because the ordinance gave police almost unchecked power to break up ordinary gatherings on sidewalks, in parks, and elsewhere in public, without any clear standard for citizens or officers to know what counted as forbidden loitering.
How it got here: Illinois trial courts split on the ordinance's validity; the Illinois Appellate Court and then the Illinois Supreme Court held it unconstitutional, and Chicago asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review that ruling.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Facing a surge in gang-related violence, the Chicago City Council in 1992 passed an ordinance letting police order groups to disperse whenever an officer believed one member was in a gang and the group appeared to be loitering with no apparent purpose. Over three years, police issued more than 89,000 dispersal orders and arrested over 42,000 people, including several people, among them Jesus Morales and Gregorio Gutierrez, who challenged their convictions in Illinois courts.
The question before the Court
Could Chicago make it a crime for people to ignore a police order to disperse, when the order could be issued to anyone found standing around in public with a suspected gang member?
The Court's answer
No — the Court agreed with the Illinois Supreme Court that Chicago's ordinance was unconstitutionally vague. The ordinance let police order anyone standing with a suspected gang member to disperse if their purpose wasn't obvious to the officer, but it gave neither citizens nor police any real standard for knowing what counted as forbidden loitering.
The Court found the law failed on two independent grounds: it didn't give ordinary people fair notice of what conduct was actually prohibited, since almost any innocent activity could look like having 'no apparent purpose,' and it handed police officers essentially unchecked, moment-to-moment discretion to decide whom to order off the street. Because the Illinois Supreme Court had already read the ordinance as giving police 'absolute discretion,' the U.S. Supreme Court was bound by that interpretation and could not save the law with a narrower reading.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Cities that want to use dispersal orders to combat gang activity now know that a law simply banning 'loitering with no apparent purpose' near a suspected gang member is too vague to survive constitutional challenge. Chicago and other cities must instead write narrower ordinances — for example, ones tied to a harmful purpose or a more specific definition of prohibited conduct — if they want similar tools to survive court review.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision affirming the Illinois Supreme Court, so the Chicago ordinance cannot be enforced as written. The city remains free to enact a narrower law — for example, one requiring a harmful purpose, targeting only confirmed gang members, or otherwise limiting police discretion — and several concurring opinions specifically suggested such alternatives. No further proceedings in this case are expected; any new ordinance would face its own separate legal challenges.
What this does not decide
The Court's holding rests on vagueness grounds alone and does not decide whether the ordinance would violate substantive due process or any freestanding constitutional right to loiter. It also does not forbid all dispersal-order laws — the plurality and concurrences suggested that more narrowly drawn ordinances, such as ones requiring a harmful purpose or targeting only known gang members, could still be constitutional.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice O'Connor
Justice O'Connor agreed the ordinance was unconstitutionally vague but only on the arbitrary-enforcement ground, not the fair-notice ground, and would not have reached the other issues the plurality addressed. She stressed that Chicago could enact a narrower ordinance—one requiring a harmful purpose, limited to gang members, or with area and manner limits—and that the ruling's scope should be read narrowly.
Concurrence — Justice Kennedy
Justice Kennedy joined the controlling parts of the plurality opinion and largely shared its concerns about inadequate notice, emphasizing that requiring a citizen to disobey a dispersal order before being punished does not by itself cure a law's vagueness, especially when citizens cannot know why an order was given.
Concurrence — Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer agreed the ordinance was invalid in all its applications because it delegated too much unguided discretion to police officers, not because it failed to give adequate notice to individual defendants. He argued the ordinance's only two limitations—group membership near a gang member and lack of apparent purpose—failed to meaningfully constrain police discretion in any application.
Dissent — Justice Scalia
“The majority today invalidates this perfectly reasonable measure by ignoring our rules governing facial challenges, by elevating loitering to a constitutionally guaranteed right, and by discerning vagueness where, according to our usual standards, none exists.”Scalia's central objection that the majority distorted facial-challenge doctrine to strike down the ordinance.
Justice Scalia argued the majority misapplied the rules governing facial challenges by requiring the city, rather than the challengers, to prove the law valid in all applications, and that the ordinance was neither vague nor did it burden any genuine constitutional right to loiter. He would have upheld the ordinance as a reasonable, traditional exercise of police power to preserve public order.
Dissent — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas argued loitering has never been a protected liberty interest, given its long history of criminalization, and that the ordinance simply revived police officers' traditional peacekeeping authority to order groups to disperse. He contended the law provided adequate notice and sufficient standards, and criticized the majority for prioritizing gang members' interests over the safety of law-abiding residents.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court first distinguished two separate doctrines for facially challenging an imprecise law: First Amendment overbreadth, which applies when a law substantially chills protected speech, and vagueness, which applies when a law fails to set standards sufficient to guard against arbitrary enforcement. The Court concluded overbreadth did not apply because the ordinance did not target speech or expressive assembly.
- The Court recognized that the freedom to remain in a public place of one's choosing for innocent reasons is part of the 'liberty' protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, even though it rejected the idea that this made the law an overbreadth case; this liberty interest set the stage for why vague restrictions on loitering raised constitutional concern.
- Applying the fair-notice branch of the vagueness doctrine, the Court reasoned that the ordinance's core term — remaining in a place with 'no apparent purpose' — gave ordinary citizens no way to know in advance whether their conduct was prohibited, since almost any activity could appear purposeless to an observing officer.
- The Court rejected Chicago's argument that requiring a person to first disobey a dispersal order cured this notice problem, explaining that if the underlying loitering is harmless, the dispersal order itself becomes an unjustified restriction on liberty rather than a fix for vague notice.
- Turning to the second vagueness ground — the risk of arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement — the Court held that the 'no apparent purpose' standard entrusted police with far too much discretion to decide, case by case, which purposes counted as legitimate, especially since the Illinois Supreme Court had already construed the ordinance as giving officers 'absolute discretion.'
- Because the Court was bound by the state court's construction of the ordinance and could not narrow it, the Court concluded the ordinance failed to establish the minimal guidelines needed to prevent arbitrary policing, making it unconstitutionally vague on its face.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Colten v. Kentucky (407 U.S. 104)
The Court said this ordinance differs from the statute upheld there because that law's underlying conduct was clearly illegal, unlike loitering here.
Distinguishes Boos v. Barry (485 U.S. 312)
The Court distinguished this case because a lower court had already narrowed the statute in Boos, unlike the ordinance here.
Reaffirms Kolender v. Lawson (461 U.S. 352)
The Court relied on Kolender's two-part vagueness test requiring fair notice and standards against arbitrary enforcement.
Reaffirms Coates v. Cincinnati (402 U.S. 611)
The Court cited Coates as support for striking down laws that specify no standard of conduct at all.