UGA students challenge Athens noise ordinance

Two University of Georgia students claim a local noise ordinance unlawfully restricts the volume of their music, regardless of whether it’s played in the heart of Athens’ pulsing entertainment district or in a serene single-family subdivision.

Their lawyer argued Tuesday that a lawsuit filed by students Robert Manlove and William Hoffman should go forward because the ordinance violates the free-speech protections of the state Constitution.

But a county attorney countered that the students lacked standing to bring the suit. The ordinance, attorney Amy Gellins added, does not regulate speech, only conduct — the volume of the music being played.

The Athens-Clarke County ordinance prohibits shouting, singing and playing music if the sound can be heard from 300 feet at anytime or from 100 feet after 11 p.m. on weeknights and after midnight on the weekends.

The maximum penalty is a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.

Manlove was threatened with a citation by a local police officer as he played music at a party in the parking lot at The Summit, an apartment complex with student housing, his lawyer, Charles Jones, told the state Supreme Court.

The students, Jones said, aren’t asking to be allowed to play their music as loud as they want. They just believe the noise ordinance should have the fewest restrictions as possible and be tailored to the characteristics of different areas of town, he said.

In his legal brief to the court, Jones said volume is to the artistic quality of music as light or shade is to paintings. “One would think it very strange indeed to hear Brahms’ Lullaby belted out at earsplitting intensity or to hear Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You/We Are Champions’ softly whispered,” he wrote.

The ordinance, Jones said, should not be so restrictive in Athens’ downtown music scene, which spawned bands such as R.E.M., the B-52s and Love Tractor.

During Tuesday’s arguments, a number of justices questioned whether the students could bring the lawsuit in the first place because they could not show they were actually harmed by the ordinance.

“How is this different from a case of riding around in their cars with their stereos blaring?” Justice Robert Benham asked.

Gellins, a senior county attorney, also noted that the students did not put in the trial record the actual ordinance that is being challenge.

Benham appeared to suggest this could be a fatal flaw in the litigation. “In the absence of filing the ordinance in the record, is there anything for the government to defend?” he asked Gellins.

The students are appealing a ruling by Clarke County Superior Court Judge David Sweat, who dismissed the suit. The judge found the students did not have an “unfettered right to generate sound at a volume of their choosing for their personal enjoyment without regard to whether a message is conveyed or whether there are consequences for others.”