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The rule of law, evenly applied to minorities as well as majorities, to the poor as well as the rich, is the great mucilage that holds society together. - Justice William 0. Douglas, 1972(1)
It seems there are two laws. There's one for this kind of area, and there's another for everyone else. - Resident of a Chicago public housing project, 2000(2)
In the past decade, cities and states have redoubled their efforts to target street gangs as part of a high-profile blitz against street crime. Since California adopted its Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act (STEP Act)3 in 1988, twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have passed anti-gang ordinances.4 Traditional gang strongholds like Chicago and Los Angeles also have been crafting ever-tougher measures, testing the line between civil order and civil rights in inner cities likened to war zones.5
The United States Supreme Court joined the debate in City of Chicago a Morales,6 when it struck down a controversial Chicago anti-gang loitering ordinance as void for vagueness under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Three years later, however, the Court;s entry into one of the most important and divisive issues in urban criminal justice has resulted in increased confusion rather than clarity. The Court's vagueness jurisprudence, which frequnetly lies at the heart of challenges to anti-gang ordinances, has become entagled with other doctrines, including substantive due process, overbreadth, and, as this Article argues, equal protection.
This Article seeks to examine the influence of Morales and contextualize it by
surveying anti-gang efforts nationwide. The Article explores how the case has shaped vagueness doctrine and how it continues to influence communities' efforts to control gangs and to shape the public order - efforts that have disproportionate effects on Hispanic and African-American communities.
Morales, the case that thrust the nation's war on gangs before the Court, was an attack on the Chicago Gang Congregation Ordinance," under which police issued more than 89,000 dispersal orders and made more than 42,000 arrests in three years.8 The ordinance allowed police to arrest any group of two or more people who remained in a public place "with no apparent purpose" if the police "reasonably believe[d]" the group included a gang member and if the loiterers failed to...