Flashing your headlights to warn other drivers is it free speech?

When Erich Campbell passed two Florida Highway Patrol cruisers parked in the median near Tampa International Airport in December 2009, he flashed his headlights to warn oncoming drivers of the radar patrol.

Then, to his surprise, one of the troopers pulled over his silver Toyota Tundra and ticketed him for improper flashing of high beams.

In August, the Land O'Lakes, Fla., resident filed a class-action lawsuit in Tallahassee against the highway patrol and other state traffic-enforcement agencies. He seeks an injunction barring law enforcement from issuing headlight-flash tickets, plus refunds and civil damages for previously cited motorists.

Campbell's lawyer, J. Marc Jones, claims his client's First Amendment right to free speech was violated. "The flashing of lights to communicate with another driver is clearly speech," he said.

David Hudson, a scholar at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University who has studied the issue, said motorists have previously challenged headlight-flashing tickets in New Jersey, Ohio and Tennessee, but those were individual cases, rather than the statewide class-action lawsuit in Florida.

"The First Amendment protects all sorts of non-verbal conduct; it protects more than the spoken or printed word," Hudson said. "Courts have found that a wide variety of actions — such as honking one's horn or flashing one's headlights — are forms of communication under the First Amendment."


Link:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-09-18/flashing-headlights-free-speech-Florida-lawsuit/50458176/1?loc=interstitialskip