Chicago v. Morales
Chicago v. Morales is a Supreme Court case that arose from a 1992 ordinance enacted by the Chicago City Council, which made it a misdemeanor for individuals to remain in one place with "no apparent purpose" in the presence of a suspected gang member if ordered to move by police. The law was intended to combat gang presence and loitering, leading to approximately 42,000 arrests over its three-year implementation. However, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that the ordinance violated due process due to its vagueness, making it difficult for individuals to understand what behavior was prohibited. The ruling underscored the importance of clarity in laws, particularly those affecting personal liberties. Some justices argued that the freedom to loiter for innocent purposes should be protected under the Fourteenth Amendment. The dissenting opinion expressed concern that the ruling could lead to increased vulnerability for law-abiding citizens in gang-affected areas. This case illustrates the complex balance between public safety initiatives and the protection of individual rights within the legal framework.
Chicago v. Morales
Date: June 10, 1999
Citation: No. 97-1121
Issue: Procedural due process
Significance: The Supreme Court held that an antiloitering ordinance was unconstitutionally vague, failing to give ordinary citizens fair notice about the kinds of conduct that are prohibited and allowing the police too much unguided discretion.
In 1992 the Chicago city council enacted a law making it a misdemeanor to remain in one place with “no apparent purpose” in the presence of a suspected gang member when ordered to move by a police officer. During its three years of application, forty-two thousand people were arrested under the law. Many cities looked to the law as a model for reclaiming streets from gangs that used loitering as a strategy to control territory. A 6-3 majority of the justices found that the law violated due process standards because of the vagueness issue. Three members of the majority wanted to rule that the freedom to loiter for innocent purposes was part of the “liberty” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. In a strong dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas accused the majority of sentencing “law-abiding citizens to lives of terror and misery.” The justices appeared to agree that a law narrowly worded to prohibit intimidating conduct on the streets would be constitutional.
Because the Supreme Court recognized the problems associated with city gangs, the tone of the Chicago decision was quite different from Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville (1972), in which the Court, in an opinion written by Justice William O. Douglas, struck down a vagrancy law by referring to the values of nonconformity and the open road as extolled by poets Walt Whitman and Vachel Lindsay.