New York’s criminalization of annoying and alarming speech finally came to an end three weeks ago when the New York Court of Appeals decided People v. Golb,1 a case that arose out of an academic debate that turned into an Internet jihad. The Golb ruling is remarkable not so much for its holding that the state’s aggravated harassment statute is unconstitutional as for how summarily it dispenses with the long-standing and widely used law. But Golb’s cursory analysis may be explained by its invocation of earlier federal litigation challenging the same statute on behalf of retired postal clerk Carlos Vives, who was arrested in 2002 for having mailed religious materials deemed to be annoying and alarming.
The voyage from Vives’ mailing to last month’s ruling highlights the complexities and frustrations of constitutional litigation. That trip featured two colorful cases, a decades-old statute that patently violated the First Amendment the day it was enacted, the repeated refusal of New York State to defend an unconstitutional statute that continued to be enforced, the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to avoid passing on the law 10 years ago, and thousands of unnecessary arrests since then, all capped by last month’s ruling from the New York Court of Appeals.
The Statute
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