Summary of facts: Gabriel Olivier is a Christian who shared his faith in a public park. The city charged him with violating an ordinance requiring “protests” to occur in a designated area. He pleaded no contest to violating the ordinance and agreed to pay a fine. Olivier then filed a civil action challenging the ordinance in federal court under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, seeking an order prohibiting the city from enforcing the law against him in the future. 

The district court dismissed Olivier’s suit on the basis of Heck v. Humphrey, a 1994 Supreme Court case holding that prisoners cannot maintain civil actions that would necessarily invalidate their convictions without first having those convictions overturned through the federal habeas corpus statute. As a result, Olivier cannot challenge the constitutionality of the city’s ordinance, even though it continues to threaten him with criminal penalties should he again share his faith in public outside a designated area.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal on the basis of Heck. Olivier then asked the Supreme Court to hear his case, and it agreed to do so. He is now asking the Court to decide whether a person can seek protection from future enforcement of an unconstitutional law if he was previously penalized for violating that same law. 

RFI’s position: The Supreme Court has never held that a person punished under an unconstitutional law is barred from challenging the constitutionality of the future application of that law. Indeed, Olivier’s challenge to the city’s ordinance places Olivier among a long line of litigants, sanctioned for practicing their faith, who seek to vindicate their constitutional rights. The distinction that the decision below has drawn between Olivier—who may no longer vindicate his right to free exercise of his religion—and other litigants who have been permitted to do so is untenable. The Supreme Court should hold that those punished for violating an unconstitutional law are not barred from challenging its future application.

Read the brief here.