Bartnicki v. Vopper

532 U.S. 514 (2001)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

The Pennsylvania State Education Association engaged in collective-bargaining negotiations with the school board. Petitioner Kane, then the president of the local union, testified that the negotiations were ' `contentious' ' and received 'a lot of media attention.' In May 1993, petitioner Bartnicki (P), who was acting as the union's 'chief negotiator,' used the cellular phone in her car to call Kane and engage in a lengthy conversation about the status of the negotiations. An unidentified person intercepted and recorded that call. In the early fall of 1993, the parties accepted a non-binding arbitration proposal that was generally favorable to the teachers. In connection with news reports about the settlement, respondent Vopper (D), a radio commentator played a tape of the intercepted conversation on his public affairs talk show. Another station also broadcast the tape, and local newspapers published its contents. Ps learned through discovery that D had obtained the tape from Jack Yocum, the head of a local taxpayers' organization that had opposed the union's demands throughout the negotiations. Yocum, who was added as a defendant, testified that he had found the tape in his mailbox shortly after the interception and recognized the voices of Bartnicki and Kane. Yocum played the tape for some members of the school board and later delivered the tape to D. The complaint alleged that each of the defendants 'knew or had reason to know' that the recording of the private telephone conversation had been obtained by means of an illegal interception. Ps sought actual damages, statutory damages, punitive damages, and attorney's fees and costs. The District Court rejected Ds’ First Amendment defense because the statutes were content-neutral laws of general applicability that contained 'no indicia of prior restraint or the chilling of free speech.' The Court of Appeals held that the Government that the federal and Pennsylvania wiretapping statutes are 'content neutral' and therefore subject to 'intermediate scrutiny.' Applying that standard, the majority concluded that the statutes were invalid because they deterred significantly more speech than necessary to protect the privacy interests at stake. The court remanded the case with instructions to enter summary judgment for respondents.