## Facts

- The Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV) sought to demonstrate in Lafayette Park and on the National Mall to draw attention to homelessness.
- The National Park Service (NPS) issued a permit allowing erection of two symbolic “tent cities” and the demonstration generally.
- NPS regulations prohibited “camping” in those parks, defining camping to include sleeping, unless in designated campgrounds.
- No designated campgrounds existed in Lafayette Park or on the National Mall.
- NPS denied CCNV’s request to allow demonstrators to sleep overnight in the tents.
- CCNV asserted that overnight sleeping in the tents was expressive conduct integral to the protest’s message.

## Issues

1. Whether applying the NPS anti-camping regulation (including a ban on sleeping) to prohibit overnight sleeping in tents during a homelessness demonstration violated the First Amendment.
2. Whether the restriction was a valid content-neutral time, place, and manner regulation in a public forum, including whether it was narrowly tailored and left open ample alternative channels.
3. Whether, if treated as regulation of expressive conduct, the anti-camping rule satisfied constitutional standards for regulating conduct with expressive elements.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the D.C. Circuit and upheld the regulation as applied.
- The Court assumed, without deciding, that overnight sleeping in connection with the demonstration had some First Amendment protection as expressive conduct.
- The Court held the anti-camping rule was content-neutral and justified without reference to the demonstrators’ message.
- The Court found the government had a substantial interest in maintaining parks in an attractive and intact condition for public use.
- The Court held the rule was narrowly tailored because it permitted tents, signs, and 24-hour presence, while prohibiting only overnight sleeping.
- The Court concluded the rule left open ample alternative channels for communicating the message about homelessness.
- The Court further held that even as regulation of expressive conduct, the anti-camping restriction was within governmental power and furthered interests unrelated to suppressing expression.
- A dissent argued the sleeping component was central to the protest and that a carefully supervised, short-term camp-in could have been accommodated.

## Legal Principles

- Content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions in a public forum are valid if justified without reference to content, narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest, and leaving open ample alternative channels of communication.
- A generally applicable rule regulating conduct in public spaces may be enforced against demonstrators even when the conduct has expressive elements, so long as the governmental interests are unrelated to suppressing expression.
- Narrow tailoring does not require the least restrictive means; it requires that the regulation not burden substantially more speech than necessary to further the government’s significant interests.
- Government may preserve and manage public park property through uniform anti-camping rules, and may distinguish between permitting symbolic structures (tents) and forbidding sleeping in them.

## Conclusion

The Court held that the Park Service could enforce its content-neutral anti-camping regulation to bar overnight sleeping in demonstration tents in Lafayette Park and on the National Mall, because the rule served substantial park-preservation interests, was narrowly tailored to those interests, and left demonstrators adequate alternative ways to convey their message.


Clark v. Cmty. for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288 (1984)