Tory v. Cochran
The Supreme Court threw out a permanent injunction that had barred two people from ever picketing or speaking publicly about attorney Johnnie Cochran, ruling that the order became an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech once Cochran died.
Because the injunction was meant to stop the pair from pressuring Cochran into paying them money, his death eliminated the reason for the order, leaving a sweeping speech ban with no remaining justification.
“the injunction, as written, now amounts to an overly broad prior restraint upon speech, lacking plausible justification”
The Court's core reasoning for why the injunction could no longer stand after Cochran's death.
How it got here: A California trial court issued the injunction and was affirmed by the California Court of Appeal; Tory and Craft sought Supreme Court review, and Cochran died after argument.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Johnnie Cochran, the well-known attorney, sued Ulysses Tory and Ruth Craft for defamation after they falsely claimed he owed them money, picketed his office with insulting signs, and pursued him while shouting threats and insults, seemingly to pressure him into paying them off. A California trial court found they had engaged in a pattern of unlawful defamation and issued a permanent injunction permanently barring them from picketing or speaking publicly about Cochran or his firm.
The question before the Court
After the man who won a defamation lawsuit died, could the permanent injunction silencing his critics still be enforced as written?
The Court's answer
No — not as written. The Court ruled that once Johnnie Cochran died, the permanent injunction lost the reason it existed. The order had been designed to stop Tory and Craft from using threatening, insulting speech to pressure Cochran into paying them off to stop defaming him; with Cochran gone, that coercive goal could no longer be achieved. A sweeping, permanent ban on all public speech about Cochran and his firm could no longer be justified, so the Court treated it as an unconstitutional prior restraint.
The Court did not rule on the bigger question originally presented — whether courts can ever issue permanent injunctions against future speech in defamation cases involving public figures. It vacated the lower court's ruling and sent the case back, leaving open the possibility that a new, narrower injunction fitted to the changed circumstances could still be requested.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
The ruling means the two critics are no longer bound by a court order that had permanently forbidden them from picketing, displaying signs, or speaking publicly about Cochran or his law firm. It also signals that broad speech-restricting injunctions can lose their legal footing when the circumstances that justified them change, even without a full First Amendment ruling on injunctions generally.
What changes now
The Court vacated the California Court of Appeal's judgment and sent the case back for further proceedings. It left open the possibility that a new, narrower injunction tailored to the changed circumstances after Cochran's death could still be sought by an appropriate party, such as his widow or law firm, but expressed no opinion on whether any such new order would be constitutional. The underlying defamation dispute and any new injunction request will now play out in the California courts.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide the broader question that Tory and Craft originally raised — whether the First Amendment ever allows a permanent injunction against future speech in a defamation case involving a public figure. It also took no position on whether a new, narrower injunction sought after Cochran's death would be constitutional.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Thomas
“But what the Court gives with the left hand it takes with the right, for it only invites further litigation”Thomas's objection that the majority's fix would just create more uncertainty and litigation.
Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Scalia, would have dismissed the case entirely as improvidently granted rather than reach the constitutional question. He argued Cochran's death made the case a poor vehicle for deciding the injunction question, that the mootness analysis was overly complicated, and that petitioners could raise their objections in California courts through a contempt proceeding if the injunction were later enforced. He viewed the majority's fix as inviting further litigation while claiming to resolve nothing.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court first considered whether Cochran's death made the case moot, since a moot case would leave the Court without power to disturb the state court's judgment. It found the injunction still restrained the petitioners' speech because nothing in its wording or in California law showed it automatically expired when Cochran died.
- Because the injunction still presented a live, ongoing restriction on speech, the Court held the case was not moot and it could proceed to consider the injunction's validity.
- The Court then focused on prior restraints — court orders that stop speech before it happens, which the Court treats as the most serious and least tolerable intrusion on free-speech rights. It asked whether the injunction's original purpose still existed.
- The trial court had issued the injunction to stop Tory and Craft from using threatening and insulting speech to pressure Cochran into paying them a 'tribute' to stop defaming him. With Cochran dead, that coercive purpose could no longer be achieved, so the reasoning behind the sweeping, permanent speech ban had largely evaporated.
- Because the injunction as written no longer served any real objective, the Court concluded it had become an overly broad restriction on speech with no plausible justification left to support it, making it unconstitutional as written.