Mass. high court to hear challenge to teen curfew

[Agnapostate]

Mass. high court to hear challenge to teen curfew - Boston.com

BOSTON—Shortly after midnight, a 16-year-old boy is stopped by police and arrested as he walks down a street in Lowell. He's jailed overnight and brought into court the next day in handcuffs and shackles.

His offense: violating Lowell's teen 11 p.m. curfew.

The youth, now 20, claims the city's curfew is unconstitutional, and he and another boy who was arrested in 2004 are asking the state's highest court to strike it down, saying it illegally restricts their right to free movement.

The Supreme Judicial Court will hear the case Monday, and its decision could affect other cities and towns in Massachusetts with similar curfews, including Chicopee, Lynn and North Adams.

Lowell enacted the curfew in 1994 as it wrestled with an increase in gang violence, including an fatal, baseball bat attack on a 16-year-old boy in a city park. The curfew prohibits teens under 17 from being out between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.

Attorneys for the men bringing the case, whose names were not made public because they were juveniles at the time, say there is no proof the curfew has accomplished what its supporters said it would do: curb crime and protect juveniles.

"It's just kind of a shot in the dark -- and they hope it will work -- but when you are restricting someone's constitutional rights, that's not good enough," said Boston attorney James Sultan.

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I'm somewhat dubious of the constitutionality of curfew arrests themselves, actually. Stop-and-identify statutes may reasonably require a person to provide his or her name and possibly address, per Hiibel v. Nevada, but a forced admission of one's age seems that it might constitute Fourth and Fifth Amendment violations. Of course, one could claim that by being out after the curfew, he or she is exercising his First Amendment right to protest the curfew...thereby triggering a Constitutional exemption.