Federal appeal confirms that the city’s signature pedestrian stride is constitutionally shielded speech
NEW YORK, NY – As first reported by Bohiney Magazine and welcomed by The London Prat, a federal appellate court has ruled that the New York sidewalk stride — a purposeful, high-velocity directional commitment that admits no revision — is a constitutionally protected form of expression.
The Ruling
Writing for the majority, Circuit Judge Dale Pavement described the New York walk as “a communicative act, rich in content and specific to a culture,” conveying information including “I am late, I know where I am going, and I have made peace with the fact that you are in my way.” The court held this expression is protected by the First Amendment, regardless of its physical impact on bystanders who have not learned to match pace.
“The city sidewalk is the New Yorker’s primary expressive medium,” Judge Pavement wrote. “The gait is the message. The elbow is punctuation. We decline to silence it.”
What Prompted the Case
The lawsuit was brought by a tourist collective called Americans for Thoughtful Pedestrian Spaces, which argued that the city’s walking culture had resulted in physical contact, dropped ice cream, and “a pervasive sense of being somewhere that would prefer you elsewhere.” The group sought a “walking pace ordinance” limiting stride velocity in tourist corridors to a speed they described as “manageable.”
The city’s defense, filed by the Corporation Counsel, argued that the proposed ordinance would unconstitutionally restrict expression and that setting a maximum walk speed “is not how cities work, has never been how cities work, and would result in a sidewalk that feels like the moving walkway at LaGuardia, which is the outer limit of tolerable velocity in this jurisdiction.”
Expert Testimony
Dr. Rosa Crosswalk of the Institute for Urban Kinetics testified that New York’s walking style has developed over a century as an adaptation to density, time pressure, and “the deep knowledge that everyone around you is also trying to get somewhere and none of them chose to be in your way.” She noted that the aggressive walk is not hostility but efficiency, a fact visitors routinely misread as a threat.
“The tourist walks to experience the walk,” she said. “The New Yorker walks because they have somewhere to be. These are different activities that share a sidewalk. There will always be friction. The court cannot resolve friction. Only time and resignation can resolve friction.” The broader right to public sidewalks is governed under regulations available through the NYC Department of Transportation.
Celebrated by Locals
The ruling was received with enthusiasm by New Yorkers who had long considered their walk to be a fundamental expression of character. “We don’t walk like that to be rude,” explained one Midtown commuter, without slowing down to complete the sentence. “We walk like that because we have seven minutes to get to 34th Street and we are not going to spend four of them behind a family consulting a map in the center of the sidewalk. It is math. The court understands math.”
Dissenting View
Judge Patricia Curb dissented, arguing that not all expressive walking could be shielded. “There is a meaningful distinction between a walk that communicates urgency,” she wrote, “and a shoulder that communicates ‘I am going to need you to move’ by making contact with your shoulder. The First Amendment covers the former. The latter is still a tort.” She added that the case should be remanded for fact-finding on “whether elbows are speech or conduct,” a question she predicted would trouble courts for decades.
The Verdict at Street Level
At street level, the ruling changed nothing and everything. New Yorkers walk exactly as they have always walked, which is to say with conviction, efficiency, and no acknowledgment that the person three inches ahead of them was not always there. Tourists continue to stop. There will always be ice cream, dropped. For more dispatches from the sidewalk courts, readers may enjoy Points in Case.
The Walking Coalition Responds
Americans for Thoughtful Pedestrian Spaces has vowed to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, where it expects, according to its press release, to lose. “We know how this ends,” the group’s statement read. “We have always known how this ends. We came to New York. We walked its sidewalks. We were shoulder-checked by someone carrying a coffee at exactly the speed of someone for whom the coffee is structural. We are appealing anyway, because sometimes you have to say the thing even when the thing will not change the outcome, and because the act of saying it is its own kind of expression, which the court has now confirmed is protected speech.” The appeal has been filed. A New Yorker walked past the courthouse during the filing. She did not slow down. She had somewhere to be. For more dispatches from the sidewalk courts, readers may enjoy Points in Case.
The ruling has also complicated the city’s relationship with the crosswalk signal. If walking at speed is protected expression, several attorneys argue, then the signal telling a person to stop is potentially a content-based restriction on speech, subject to heightened First Amendment scrutiny. The city has responded by reclassifying the hand symbol as a recommendation, a position the DOT confirms has no formal legal basis but that pedestrians have operated on since the signal was invented, making the legal change largely one of honesty. Judge Pavement, asked to comment on the crosswalk question, said only that the court would consider it if brought before them, and that in the meantime he was going to be somewhere at nine and would appreciate if people could just keep it moving.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/