City Commissioners voted unanimously Monday to change Sarasota’s panhandling ordinance in response to a federal lawsuit filed last year by a group of homeless men.
The men, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, argued the ordinance unfairly targets the homeless by restricting panhandling but not other kinds of solicitation – such as the request for donations supporting a nonprofit agency or signatures supporting a ballot initiative.
Because solicitation is a form of free speech, the lawsuit says, the ordinance violates the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights.
“There was a content neutrality problem, because panhandling is narrowly defined as an immediate request for donations,” said City Attorney Bob Fournier.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down a content-based regulation in the case of Reed v. Town of Gilbert, a ruling which Fournier said has been used nationwide to invalidate municipal panhandling ordinances like the one in Sarasota.
Fournier advised the city change its ordinance to comply with the Supreme Court ruling and to have a viable defense against the ACLU lawsuit.
In doing so, the city also changed the ordinance’s title from “Panhandling” to” Personal Solicitation.”
“It’s a step in the right direction and one that we asked the city to do before we filed the lawsuit,” said Michael Barfield, vice president of the Florida ACLU, in response to the amendment.
But, he added, “I’m not conceding this ordinance is constitutional in its new form. I think the revised ordinance still has constitutional issues; it’s still restricting speech” in certain locations.
Whereas the original ordinance restricted panhandling to public streets and sidewalks – expressly prohibiting it in parks, beaches, sidewalk cafes or anywhere within 20 feet of an automatic teller machine – the amended ordinance removes those restrictions.
Both versions, however, prohibit solicitation in public parking garages and sidewalk cafes. They also both ban aggressive solicitation that might involve harassment, threats or intimidation, all of which is not protected under the First Amendment.
The ACLU will continue to pursue the lawsuit, which also challenges the city’s lodging-out-of-doors ordinance, despite the recent changes, Barfield said.
“They are still going to be responsible for attorneys’ fees,” Barfield said, “and damages to those people who had been prosecuted under this unconstitutional ordinance.”