C.  Jehovah’s Witnesses Prevail in Striking

Broad Permit Requirement for Solicitors

 

      Chalk up another First Amendment victory for Jehovah’s Witnesses who solicit door to door, offering free subscriptions to the religion’s publications.  In Watchtower Bible and Tract Society v. Village of Stratton, 122 S. Ct. 2080 (2002), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an ordinance of the Village of Stratton, Ohio, requiring “canvassers, solicitors, peddlers, [or] hawkers” who go on private residential property for the “purpose of advertising, promoting, selling and/or explaining any product, service, organization or cause” to obtain a permit by filling out a registration form. 

      The application asks about their cause, why they are canvassing, and “other information” concerning them and their business or purpose “as may be reasonably necessary to accurately describe the nature of the privilege desired.”  The permit had to be carried at all times by the solicitors and produced whenever requested by a police officer or by any person solicited.  No fee was charged for the permit and its issuance was a ministerial act.

      The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York challenged the statute as violative of the Free Speech and Religion clauses of the First Amendment.  The federal trial court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld most of the ordinance’s provisions (see The First Amendment and the Media – 2002 at 169).  The Supreme Court reversed and remanded.

 

Ordinance Is Overbroad

      While recognizing the importance of door-to-door canvassing and pamphleteering in furthering freedom of expression, the Court also recognized other legitimate interests of government in protecting citizens from fraudulent solicitations, other criminal activity, and invasion of privacy by strangers on one’s own property.  The Court then referred to its long tradition (particularly in Jehovah’s Witnesses cases) of striking a balance among these interests.  Here, the ordinance in question was out of balance because of its overbreadth. 

      According to the Court: “The ordinance unquestionably applies, not only to religious causes, but to political activity as well.  It would seem to extend to ‘residents casually soliciting the votes of neighbors,’ or ringing doorbells to enlist support for employing a more efficient garbage collector.”  Id. at 2089.  Moreover, it violated the anonymity in political activity fostered by McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334 (1995).

      An interesting sidebar to the holding here is the dictum in the last substantive paragraph of the Court’s opinion, which should gladden the hearts of civil libertarians:

 

The rhetoric used in the World War II-era opinions that repeatedly saved petitioners’ coreligionists from petty prosecutions reflected the Court’s evaluation of the First Amendment freedoms that are implicated in this case.  The value judgment that then motivated a united democratic people fighting to defend those very freedoms from totalitarian attack is unchanged.  It motivates our decision today.  Watchtower, 122 S. Ct. at 2091.

 

--Harvey L. Zuckman