## Facts

- The District of Columbia enacted the Juvenile Curfew Act of 1995 in response to concerns about juvenile crime and victimization.
- The Act applied to persons under 17, excluding judicially emancipated or married minors.
- The Act barred covered minors from remaining in public places or on the premises of establishments during curfew hours (generally 11:00 p.m.–6:00 a.m. on weeknights and midnight–6:00 a.m. on weekends), unless an enumerated defense applied.
- The Act imposed potential liability on (i) minors who violated the curfew, (ii) parents/guardians who knowingly permitted or inadequately controlled violations, and (iii) owners/operators/employees of establishments who knowingly allowed minors to remain, subject to specified steps such as seeking police assistance if a minor refused to leave.
- The Act contained eight defenses, including: being accompanied by a parent/authorized adult; running a parent-directed errand without detour; interstate travel; employment or travel to/from work; emergencies; being on the sidewalk at one’s home or a neighbor’s home; attending supervised school/religious/recreational activities; and exercising First Amendment rights (religion, speech, assembly).
- Plaintiffs (minors, parents, and a business) alleged the Act violated substantive due process (minors’ liberty/freedom of movement and parents’ childrearing authority), the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, equal protection (via the Fifth Amendment), and void-for-vagueness principles.

## Issues

1. Whether the Act infringed a fundamental liberty interest of minors to move about in public or a fundamental right of parents to direct their children’s upbringing, triggering strict scrutiny.
2. What standard of review applied to the Act, and whether the Act satisfied that standard.
3. Whether the Act violated minors’ First Amendment rights despite an express First Amendment defense.
4. Whether anticipated enforcement (including police stops to investigate curfew violations) violated the Fourth Amendment.
5. Whether the Act was unconstitutionally vague or otherwise invalid under equal-protection principles.

## Decision

- The en banc D.C. Circuit reversed the district court’s summary judgment for plaintiffs, vacated the injunction, and upheld the Act.
- A plurality concluded the Act did not implicate fundamental rights of minors or parents and therefore did not require strict scrutiny.
- The plurality further reasoned that even if heightened scrutiny applied, the Act would be constitutional in light of the government’s interests and the statute’s defenses and limits.
- The court rejected facial First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, vagueness, and equal-protection challenges.
- No single rationale commanded a majority; concurring opinions supplied votes for the judgment while differing on the scope of the liberty and parental interests implicated.

## Legal Principles

- Minors’ constitutional liberties may be subject to greater regulation than adults’ liberties, particularly where age-based restrictions have historical and legal support.
- A curfew affecting minors does not necessarily constitute a direct and substantial interference with parental authority when it preserves parental options and contains substantial exceptions/defenses.
- A content-neutral curfew with an express exception/defense for protected expressive and religious activity may be upheld against a facial First Amendment challenge where incidental burdens are limited and justified by strong governmental interests.
- Police may conduct brief investigative stops based on reasonable suspicion of a curfew violation; a curfew statute is less vulnerable to Fourth Amendment attack when it provides definite temporal and substantive predicates for enforcement.
- A law is not void for vagueness when it provides clear curfew hours, defines covered persons/locations, and enumerates defenses in a way that gives notice and constrains enforcement discretion; age classifications generally receive rational-basis review.

## Conclusion

The en banc D.C. Circuit upheld the District’s juvenile curfew, concluding that the Act’s limited hours and broad defenses, including protection for First Amendment activity, sufficiently addressed public-safety concerns and defeated facial challenges based on substantive due process, parental rights, the First and Fourth Amendments, vagueness, and equal protection, notwithstanding separate opinions disputing the proper characterization of the rights at stake and the governing level of scrutiny.


Hutchins v. District of Columbia, 188 F.3d 531 (D.C. Cir. 1999) (en banc)