Michael Paul Miselis v. United States

The Federal Anti-Riot Act (“Act”) prohibits interstate travel or the use of the facilities of interstate commerce with the intent to engage in a number of activities related to a “riot.” 18 U.S.C. § 2101. The prohibited activities include the inciting, organizing, promoting, encouraging, participating in, or carrying on of a riot, as well as the commission of any act of violence in furtherance of a riot. The law was passed in response to the civil rights riots of the 1960s and was immediately used to prosecute Vietnam War Era protesters. After the Seventh Circuit narrowly (2-1) upheld the facial constitutionality of the law, while vacating the convictions of the Chicago Seven, the law fell out of use and faded from public view. But no longer. In response to recent civil unrest around the country, prosecutions under the Act have resumed, and the lower courts are divided on the constitutionality of the law. The Fourth Circuit held below that certain aspects of the Act were facially overbroad, but that those portions of the law were severable from the rest of the statute. Moreover, the court inferred that the petitioner knowingly pled guilty to the constitutional parts of the law, upholding his conviction under the same. In a twin prosecution in the Central District of California, the district court struck down the law as unconstitutional in its entirety. And both of these decisions conflict, in different ways, with the Seventh Circuit’s interpretation of the law. At this time in our nation’s history, this Court should resolve the important questions of the dividing line between protest and riot, and the constitutional limit of the federal