Simpson

Appellant Robert H.'Simpson is the defendant in a pending misdemeanor prosecution in the Sacramento Municipal Court. The charge is picketing within the state Capitol, in violation of section 171f, subdivision 3, of the California Penal Code. Asserting the statute’s unconstitutionally, he petitioned the superior court for a writ of prohibition restraining his prosecution. The writ was an appropriate remedy. (Rescue Army v. Municipal Court (1946) 28 Cal.2d 460, 463-467 [ 171 P.2d 8 ].) He appeals from a denial of relief, contending that the ban on picketing within the state Capitol violates the freedoms of speech and petition secured to him by the First Amendment and protected against state invasion by the Fourteenth Amendment of the federal Constitution and article I, sections 9 and 10, of the California Constitution.

There is no charge here of violent, boisterous behavior, of “fighting words” or of obstructive or disruptive activity. Indeed, since subdivision 2 of the statute prohibits activity which disrupts the orderly conduct of official business, we construe subdivision 3 to forbid peaceable, nonobstructive picketing within the interior of the state Capitol…