Court: UGA students can’t just crank it up

The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a lawsuit filed by two University of Georgia students who claimed a local noise ordinance unlawfully restricted the volume of their music.

The lawsuit, filed by students Robert Manlove and William Hoffman, said the noise ordinance should not be so restrictive in downtown Athens, the heart of the city’s pulsing music scene which has spawned bands such as R.E.M., the B-52s and Love Tractor.

The ordinance prohibits shouting, singing and playing music if the sound can be heard from 300 feet away at any time or from 100 feet after 11 p.m. on weeknights and after midnight on the weekends.

The suit challenged the ordinance on First Amendment grounds. Volume should be constitutionally protected because it is to the artistic quality of music as light and shade are to paintings, the students’ lawyer argued.

But the state Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, dismissed the suit. The court found that the two students had failed to show any harm or injury resulting from the ordinance.

Although one student received a verbal reprimand from a police officer, neither student was ever prosecuted. “In order to challenge the constitutionality of an ordinance on First Amendment grounds, the party before the court must show an injury in fact,” Justice Robert Benham wrote for the majority.

Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, joined by Justices Carol Hunstein and Harold Melton, dissented. A plaintiff need not risk actual arrest or prosecution to bring a court challenge to a law that criminalizes conduct that may be subject to constitutional protection, Sears wrote.

“Music is inherently expressive, and it receives the full protection of the First Amendment, even if it has no lyrics,” she added.