Day Labor and Free Speech

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Cities and suburbs across America have tried to muscle immigrant day laborers off the sidewalk, passing laws that prohibit job solicitation in public places and enforcing them with ticketing and arrest sweeps. Federal courts have repeatedly struck down these laws, recognizing that the First Amendment protects all people who want to speak freely and assemble peaceably.

That streak of successes had a discouraging setback last week in California when a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a misguided ordinance from the Los Angeles suburb of Redondo Beach. The ordinance forbids anyone “to stand on a street or highway and solicit, or attempt to solicit, employment, business or contributions from an occupant of any motor vehicle.” It forbids drivers to “stop, park or stand a motor vehicle” while trying to hire somebody.

The majority bought the argument that the law was a carefully written attempt to prevent men, cars and trucks from mixing dangerously in the middle of the street. It cited an earlier ruling on a law in Phoenix that prohibited members of the community group Acorn from approaching cars stopped at red lights to ask for change.

The problem, as Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote in dissent, is that the Redondo Beach ordinance isn’t a narrowly tailored constraint to ensure smooth traffic flow. It is a broad, indiscriminate assault on all manner of legitimate speech and conduct.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/opinion/14mon2.html?th&emc=th