In Oliver v. City of Brandon, Mississippi, (Sup. Ct., March 20, 2026), the U.S. Supreme Court held that a street preacher may move ahead with his challenge to a city ordinance that limits protests and demonstrations around the city's amphitheater to a designated area when events are scheduled at the amphitheater. The city argued that because the preacher had been convicted of violating the same ordinance several years earlier, the Supreme Court's decision in Heck v. Humphrey bars the suit. Heck prohibits the use of 42 USC §1983 to challenge a prior conviction or sentence in order to obtain release from custody or to obtain an award of damages. Today the Supreme Court held that this does not bar the street preacher's suit because he is only seeking an injunction to prevent future enforcement of the ordinance. The fact that a victory in his suit would mean that his prior conviction was unconstitutional does not mean that it is barred. Justice Kagan's opinion for a unanimous court said in part:
Olivier’s suit does not ... “collateral[ly] attack” the old conviction..... It thus cannot give rise, as Heck feared, to “parallel litigation” respecting his prior conduct.... The suit, after all, is not about what Olivier did in the past... Unlike in Heck, the suit merely attempts to prevent a future prosecution....
... [T]he City says, a judgment in Olivier’s favor would “necessarily imply the invalidity of [his] prior conviction[].”... To declare the city ordinance unconstitutional, as Olivier seeks, would be to imply that no one—including Olivier—should have been convicted under that law.
The argument is a fair one, but hardly dispositive. We have to agree that if Olivier succeeds in this suit, it would mean his prior conviction was unconstitutional. So, strictly speaking, the Heck language fits. But that could just show that the phrasing was not quite as tailored as it should have been....
We think, with the benefit of hindsight, that ... the sentence relied on swept a bit too broad. That language was used in Heck to identify claims that were really assaults on a prior conviction, even though involving some indirection.
