Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 16, 1991 TAG: 9104160061
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The justices will decide, probably sometime in 1992, whether states may ban political speech and activities within 100 feet of polling places while allowing other forms of speech in the same areas.
Tennessee's law drew that distinction and was struck down by the state Supreme Court because of it.
In other action, the court agreed to decide whether Mississippi has ended unlawful racial segregation at its state universities. The decision could yield important guidelines on what states must do to overcome the days when whites and blacks were required by law to attend different schools.
Nearly 30 years after federal troops enforced a court order to admit a black student named James Meredith to Ole Miss, "hardly a dent has been made in Mississippi's entrenched racial caste system in higher education," charged the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in urging the justices to take the case.
The Supreme Court will consider whether the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was right in ruling last September that Mississippi had met its obligations by ending officially sanctioned segregation, even though a separation of the races still exists at the state's historically white and black colleges.
In the political campaigning case, the justices will be studying a Tennessee law that had been in effect for 15 years before it was challenged by Rebecca Freeman, campaign treasurer for a candidate to the city council for Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County.
A state trial judge upheld the law, but the state Supreme Court reversed that ruling last October.
Noting that only political speech and political activity were banned, the state court said the law "is content-based because it regulates a specific subject matter . . . and a certain category of speakers, campaign workers."
The state court said the Tennessee ban could be imposed "within the polling place itself" but not outside of it.
The justices were told that 40 other states restrict campaigning within designated boundaries, and that 36 states establish the boundary at 100 feet or more away from polling places.
Lawyers for Freeman said the law unfairly makes only certain types of speech a crime.
by CNB