City of Wichita v. Griffie

Summary

The court held that Wichita's ordinance criminalizing "noisy conduct tending to reasonably arouse alarm, anger or resentment in others" is facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment because it reaches a substantial amount of protected expressive activity compared with its legitimate applications. The court further held that the unconstitutional language could be severed from the same subsection's valid prohibition on fighting words, so the ordinance was not invalidated in its entirety. The court reversed both the Court of Appeals' judgment and the district court's judgment.