Editor’s note: Responding to a mean and unconstitutional ban against panhandling passed last year by the city of West Palm Beach, homeless people and their supporters rallied to protest and defy the law, which was struck down as a violation of free speech, setting a precedent as other cities in the area and elsewhere try out similar bans. The article below by activist Jeff Weinberger of the October 22nd Alliance to End Homelessness has passages from an opinion piece published in the Palm Beach Post, and from a letter to City Commissioners.
Photo by Kat Duesterhaus
West Palm Beach, FL. It was with much rumbling last year that the city of West Palm Beach, in the days between Christmas and the New Year, passed yet one more law banning destitute individuals from asking for help across large swaths of the city. Citing a blight on the aesthetics of those neighborhoods, the law imposed criminal penalties and fines on all of its would-be violators.
As promised by the ACLU of Florida, Southern Legal Counsel and other prominent civil libertarians, the city would be sued and, based on clearly established legal precedent, its new law, as had already been established in dozens of cases across the country, would be shot down on constitutional grounds.
That promise was tantamount to a scream warning someone they were on the verge of walking over the edge of a cliff, that the city was clearly on a legal suicide mission. So, on Nov. 29, barely eleven months after the passage of the ban, the city landed at the bottom of that precipice with an unheralded thud.
[And below, in a presentation to the city commissioners of his own city of Tamarac, he further writes]:
Not a year ago, the city of West Palm Beach had been duly warned and failed to heed that warning in passing a panhandling ban which last week they were compelled to repeal, having been sued on behalf of three named plaintiffs. Closer to home, the cities of Pompano Beach and Fort Lauderdale had been warned, and are now on the losing end of litigation which has forced them to dramatically alter or stop enforcing their panhandling ordinances. And previously, Miami, Tampa and Pensacola were compelled to read from the very same script. Their panhandling bans have rightly been challenged and overturned on First Amendment grounds.
It’s unfortunate that on August 25 you and your city attorney chose to swim against the tide of legal history and precedent in supporting and approving an expansion of Tamarac’s prohibition on panhandling. It’s unfortunate that you didn’t take the time to understand that subsequent to the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, a sea change in the interpretation of content-based speech took place, which had the effect of rendering all content-based speech – and that includes panhandling – presumptively protected by the First Amendment and subject to strict scrutiny. Lacking a narrowly tailored and compelling government interest, panhandling cannot be banned.
This ordinance, similar in multiple ways to those ordinances that have been challenged and overturned, is unquestionably unconstitutional. So I’m here today to urge you to put enforcement of the ordinance on hold immediately, to go back and do your homework so that you understand your ordinance’s shortcomings, and to engage in a process that will lead to its repeal at the earliest time possible. Short of providing a roof over the head of every homeless person, nothing could be a better Christmas present than that.
Short of that, however, you will be violating your sworn duty to uphold the constitution, and all necessary steps will be taken to overturn the ordinance. As a resident of this city and a person who has allied with legal professionals to overturn such bans in a number of cities, I can assure you my mission is and always will be justice for the least among us. I look forward to monitoring the city’s progress on this issue in the immediate future.
Update: Within just the last few days, the commissioners in Leon County, home to Florida’s capitol, Tallahassee, also voted to draft new ordinances banning panhandling and camping. All of this comes despite a multitude of rulings nationwide that have clarified the unconstitutionality of panhandling and camping bans.
Jeff Weinberger, founder of the October 22nd Alliance to End Homelessness, has been advocating for the civil rights of people experiencing homelessness for 15 years. His street outreach has led to successful federal lawsuits to overturn unconstitutional bans on panhandling in several Florida cities, and to end the City of Miami’s indiscriminate trashing of homeless folks’ property.
