State Attorneys Appeal Judge's Ruling: California vs. Justin Bieber Paparazzo

Looking to save a law enacted to rid roads of menacing paparazzi, the state argues that a trial judge took his First Amendment analysis too far.

California wants another shot to protect a law intended to dissuade paparazzi from reckless driving in pursuit of a celebrity.

On Wednesday, attorneys for California petitioned for an appellate review of Rubinson's decision.

It's the opinion of the Los Angeles City Attorney that the old criminal penalties aren't sufficient to deter paparazzi from engaging in reckless driving and endangering bystanders. The paparazzi, it is argued, have no trouble paying nominal fines. So California made it a misdemeanor to violate driving laws with an "intent to capture..."

In the petition, California's attorneys deem Judge Rubinson's decision dismissing one of the counts against the alleged Bieber-stalking shutterbug to be "based on a fundamental misunderstanding of First Amendment jurisprudence."

"It was a criminal law of general application that applied to any person, including newsgatherers," says the appellate petition. "The inclusion of the intent element in the statute was not superfluous and did not implicate the First Amendment. By including the intent element, the statute targeted the reason or intent behind the reckless driving -- the aggressive intent to get the 'money shot.' This intent heightens the offender's reckless driving to an even more dangerous level than reckless driving alone."

State attorneys add that the statute was "content-neutral because it applied to all driving designed to capture an image without regard to the content of the image sought to be captured."

Being "content-neutral" is generally the most important consideration in the review of whether a law passes constitutional muster. The First Amendment is generally understood to disallow lawmakers from making laws that favor one form of speech over another. As such, laws have to be written to be narrowly-tailored.

The answer that California is attempting to make in its appellate petition is that the law regulates conduct -- not speech -- and that the press isn't protected from liability for tortious or criminal acts. The attorneys quote various Supreme Court decisions affirming this concept and portray the rejected anti-paparazzi law as something that wouldn't prohibit anything from being published, only have an indirect effect on certain conduct in the course of gathering information.

Read More: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/california-justin-bieber-paparazzo-state-401966