Toto

The point of the ordinance was that it was not discriminatory. It required all door to door solicitors to register, whether they were selling vacuum cleaners or salvation.

I live in an allegedly controlled access complex. Our carpet cleaners are JW (and they do a terrible job.) The apartment manager has thrown out some JW canvassers, and they have told her she is going to hell. I don't see how they would have any legal right to gain access under this ruling.

Joel

I find that to be interesting. The JW's don't believe in hell.

Toto

Perhaps she made it up. She was laughing when she said it. Or maybe these JW's were recent converts not up on the message.

Stephen Maturin

The decision addresses the authority of local governments to impose restrictions on door-to-door soliciting, not what owners/managers can do to exclude people from the premises. Owners and property managers can still resort to whatever means of restricting access they have under state law. As I read it, the Court's ruling doesn't create or suggest a limitless First Amendment "entry privilege" that trumps all state trespass laws (although the Mormons and the JWs will no doubt claim otherwise ).

Oresta

Toto,
You are following this more closely than I am and have a legal background . Enlighten me here. It is my understanding that the purpose for the ordinance requiring registration prior to solititation was an economic one to protect residents from flim flam vendors with a scam. If the ordinance were to have added, along with JWs, solicitors seeking signatures on petitions to outlaw gambling casinos, folks handing out PETA literature or others seeking signatures for a ballot referendum, and other door-to-door folks who aren't vending a commercial product but an ideological/religious one, I'd have no problem with the ordinance. However, my understanding is the ordinance doesn't require all and anyone who wants to canvass neighborhoods for whatever reason to register; just commersal vendors and the JWs.

Stephen Maturin

Oresta,

It looks as though the ordinance is considerably broader than that. The operative provision reads:

The Court at least suggested that an ordinance aimed solely at money solicitors or commercial sellers would have been okay. From the majority opinion:

abe smith

Humankind's need to be allowed to express ALL ideas & possibilities, no matter how apparently-wacko, weird, unpleasant or everything-else, MATTERS SO MUCH in assuring human liberty, that the right freely to expose all-that-stuff publicly and the/YOUR right freely to access all-that stuff OUTWEIGHS all other considerations. Do you dislikers-of-the-JWs really want someone else (fundies, Government agency, the local RC bishop ....) to have the power to decide WHAT YOU are to be allowed to hear, read, know-about? The Cheuch(that human fiction = a bunch of old male nominally-virginal bachelor facists) has been trying for the better part of 2 millennia to control & to censor what YOU are to be permitted to know; and that ain't over YET! The free agora of IDEAS wh/ we allegedly have , by law, here in the US of A makes us very much different from nearly-all the rest of the World. If any agency can control what ideas are to be allowed publication, YOUR liberty is at stake. If you don't want to hear what the JWs or anyone else have to say, tell them "Go AWAY!" and shut your door. Or better yet, post a large sign next to the doorbell: "YOUR "GOD"IS A HUMAN FICTION." And so exercise YOUR First Amendment rights. "Those who would deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." Sheesh! People like us have gone to the cross, the block, the stake for these rights! Abe

Lady MacDuff

Well said, Abe!

Although door-to-door solicitors are annoying, I would rather be able to make the choice on whether to listen to them myself than have the government choose for me. It is the same with this new talemarketing bill. I get at least 5 calls per day, sometimes more. I have found that it is effective to just tell them politely not to call me again (unfortunately, for every business that stops calling me, three more new ones seem to pop up in its place!) But I do not support the government making rules for who can call me and who cannot (political candidates and parties are, of course, exempt from the law!). I would rather choose who to listen to myself.

Oresta

It looks as though the ordinance is considerably broader than that. The operative provision reads:


quote:
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The practice of going in and upon private property and/or the private residence of Village residents in the Village by canvassers, solicitors, peddlers, hawkers, itinerant merchants or transient vendors of merchandise or services, not having been invited to do so by the owners or occupants of such private property or residences, and not having first obtained a permit pursuant to Section 116.03 of this Chapter, for the purpose of advertising, promoting, selling and/or explaining any product, service, organization or cause, or for the purpose of soliciting orders for the sale of goods, wares, merchandise or services, is hereby declared to be a nuisance and is prohibited.

Thanks for the the clarification of the ordinance. I stand corrected; the ordinance is not discriminatory. Yet I still agree with the Steven's majority opinion. This ordinance has a chilling effect on grass roots and community activism. Ironically, the JWs have done all of us a service.