Olivier v. City of Brandon: Oral Argument

Case Summary:Olivier v. City of Brandon arises from Gabriel Olivier’s street‑preaching near a concert at the Brandon, Mississippi amphitheater, where he used signs and a loudspeaker to evangelize on sidewalks and grassy areas just outside the venue. After the city adopted an ordinance confining all “protests” to a remote designated zone in the park, the police chief ordered Olivier to move there; when he returned to the higher‑traffic area so concertgoers could actually hear him, officers arrested and charged him under the ordinance, he pled no contest and paid a fine, and he later filed a § 1983 suit seeking damages and an injunction on the ground that the ordinance and its enforcement violated his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether a person who has been convicted under a local ordinance may still bring a federal civil‑rights suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for prospective declaratory and injunctive relief against that ordinance, or whether such a suit is barred by the Court’s precedent in Heck v. Humphrey because success would necessarily imply that the prior conviction is invalid.