Chicago’s police superintendent and a top mayoral aide would be empowered to impose three-hour-long snap curfews anywhere in the city under a newly revised curfew ordinance that still raises major constitutional concerns.

With 31 co-sponsors, downtown Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) plans to push the compromise through the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety he chairs in hopes of preventing large groups of young people summoned by social media from assembling downtown with violent consequences, known as “teen takeovers.”

“The city should definitely anticipate litigation being filed over this proposal,” said Sheila Bedi, a clinical law professor at Northwestern University. “I’ve heard no amendments that would suggest that any of the constitutional issues have been redressed.”

The ACLU of Illinois and the National Lawyers Guild view the newly revised plan as somewhat of an improvement. The requirement that the mayor’s office sign off on curfew determinations would “hopefully create some checks and balances,” Bedi said.

But the groups still said the plan demonizes young people and violates the First Amendment right to assemble in a way that will invite costly legal challenges.

“The problem is declaring a curfew in the moment,” said Amanda Yarusso, a civil rights attorney and member of the National Lawyers Guild. “As well as the fact that it’s in anticipation of some sort of, not even criminal activity, but anything that’s likely to ‘present or cause an unreasonable risk to public health, safety and welfare.’ It’s just way too vague and broad and open to interpretation in a way that runs afoul of the Constitution.”

Bedi added the curfew proposal, pushed by proponents as a preventative tool, does not “take into account the psychology of teenagers,” noting research that shows curfews are “ineffective at reducing crime and victimization.”

“The idea that the superintendent’s decision to impose a curfew is then going to get effectively communicated to teenagers and then they’re going to stay home just seems like a really flawed logic model, and it’s impossible to imagine how the snap curfew wouldn’t result in arrests,” Bedi said.

Johnson is equally “unequivocal” in his opposition to curfews, having successfully prevented two out of three teen takeovers a few weekends ago. His office has thwarted teen takeovers by sending out crisis response workers to help intervene in conflicts as they arise, contacting organizers ahead of time and enlisting Chicago Public Schools to do outreach and discourage the takeovers, Gatewood told WBEZ.

The mayor firmly believes that “criminalizing young people” by sweeping them off the streets will “not serve as a deterrent” to so-called teen takeovers and that only investing in young people will do that.

Nevertheless, the mayor has no plans to veto the ordinance, according to Kennedy Bartley, deputy mayor for external affairs.

Bartley noted that the ordinance has “well over” enough votes to pass the City Council and survive a mayoral veto.

Why not veto the curfew ordinance simply to uphold the mayor’s principles?

“We have a budget season coming up where we are laser-focused on ensuring that we’re able to protect and maintain investments,” Bartley told the Sun-Times.

“There are a number of calculations in informing why the mayor wouldn’t go into just an unnecessary battle with a chairman [Hopkins] who came to the table in good faith,” Bartley said.

Ald. Brian Hopkins.

The curfew compromise is co-sponsored by two of Johnson’s most powerful City Council allies: Finance Chair Pat Dowell (3rd) and Budget Chair Jason Ervin (28th).

Ervin was particularly pleased with the decision to strip the curfew declaration power away from the 22 Chicago police district commanders.

“Centralizing it creates a single standard. That way, there’s not the arbitrary nature of the way it could potentially be applied if you’ve got 22 different people using 22 different standards,” Ervin said.

“Even though the rules on paper may be the same, we’re talking about people, and people make different decisions even given the same set of facts.”

ACLU of Illinois spokesman Ed Yohnka said prior notification of a snap curfew and the “lack of clarity about where and when it will be” are “primary questions” that remain unanswered.

“How are they told? Is there an announcement? If it’s in a large group, can everybody see it?” Yohnka said.

“If somebody is, say in a coffee shop in the area where the announcement is made and they come out 40 minutes later because they were having coffee, are they subject to this?”