WASHINGTON – A push by Republican states to ban panhandling was sidelined at theSupreme Court, which rejected on March 2 an invitation from Alabama to rule that begging is not protected speech under the First Amendment.
In an appealbackedby 19 Republican attorneys general from other states, Alabama hadasked the court to decidewhether the Constitution allows criminalizing panhandling.
A homeless man from Montgomery, Jonathan Singleton, successfully challenged the state's panhandling bans as a violation of his free speech rights.
'Today it is me. Tomorrow it could be you'
Singleton was cited six times for violating a state law against soliciting contributions, including for holding a sign that read "HOMELESS. Today it is me, tomorrow it could be you" while standing in the grass near a highway exit.
Violators could be punished with fines up to $500 or three months in jail under one anti-begging law.Another measure sets fines up to $100 or as many as 10 days in jail for soliciting contributions from people in cars.
After Singleton filed a class-action lawsuit in 2020, lower courts blocked enforcement of the laws.
A federal appeals court based in Atlanta cited its previous decision in a different case from Florida that begging is speech protected by the First Amendment.
A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said Alabama's laws are different from a ban on panhandling on Fort Lauderdale's beaches upheld in 1999,since those restrictions weren't citywide.
Alabama told theSupreme Courtthat officials need more leeway to address panhandling amid the homelessness crisis and a "dramatic growth" in policies aimed at dealing with the problem.
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At the birth of the nation, states banned 'idleness' and 'wandering'
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall argued that begging was a crime at the start of the nation. So it should not be protected speech under the First Amendment.
"At the founding, States commonly prohibited idleness, wandering about with no course of business or fixed residence, begging in the streets, and the like," Marshall wrote in his appeal. "The basic theory, inherited from the English, was to distinguish those who could work [but refused] from those who could not."
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Is begging communication? Courts have said it is protected by First Amendment
Lawyers for Singleton, some of whom work for the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Homelessness Law Center, countered that the historic laws Alabama cites "criminalized the conduct of voluntary idleness, not the communicative aspect of begging."
And even if they did cover begging, Singleton's lawyers said, First Amendment protections aren't determined by what laws were on the books at a single moment in time.
That's why Alabama's argument cuts against the position taken by courts across the country and against the Supreme Court's "long and unbroken line of precedent recognizing that speech seeking charitable relief is protected by the First Amendment," his lawyers wrote.
When initiating the lawsuit in 2020, theSouthern Poverty Law Center saidAlabama "should dedicate more resources to housing, shelter and health care that would meet those needs rather than jailing or ticketing people that ask for help."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Supreme Court won't hear Alabama's bid to end protections for begging
