## Facts

- Multiple municipalities enacted ordinances restricting or prohibiting distribution of handbills and circulars on public streets and, in some instances, door-to-door canvassing without a permit.
- Clara Schneider (a Jehovah’s Witness) was convicted under an ordinance requiring a police permit before distributing circulars in the streets and regulating door-to-door distribution through licensing tied to an assessment of the applicant’s “character” and “reliability.”
- Other defendants were convicted under ordinances broadly banning hand-to-hand distribution of printed matter to pedestrians or generally barring handbills on streets.
- The leafleting at issue included religious and political materials distributed to members of the public.
- State courts upheld the convictions under the local ordinances.
- The Supreme Court consolidated the cases because they presented a common constitutional question under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

## Issues

1. Whether municipal ordinances that ban or broadly restrict leafleting on public streets violate the freedoms of speech and press as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Whether a municipality’s interest in preventing litter and maintaining clean streets justifies prohibiting hand-to-hand distribution of literature to willing recipients.
3. Whether a discretionary police-permit requirement for door-to-door canvassing and distribution of circulars constitutes an unconstitutional prior restraint.

## Decision

- The Court reversed the judgments sustaining the convictions and invalidated the challenged ordinances.
- It held that keeping streets clean and of good appearance was insufficient to justify prohibiting distribution of literature to persons willing to receive it.
- It recognized that municipalities may regulate street use to protect traffic flow and public safety, but such regulation may not abridge the liberty to communicate by speech and distribution of literature.
- It rejected the argument that selective enforcement (arresting distributors only when recipients litter) could cure an ordinance that facially forbids distribution.
- It held that restricting leafleting on streets and alleys is not saved by leaving other public places available.
- It concluded that a licensing scheme conditioning permission to canvass and distribute circulars on police discretion and character inquiries was incompatible with the freedoms of speech and press.

## Legal Principles

- The First Amendment freedoms of speech and press are protected from state and municipal infringement through the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Public streets and sidewalks are primary venues for communication; broad bans on leafleting in those spaces are constitutionally suspect.
- Municipalities may address traffic obstruction, coercive conduct, and littering through narrow regulations targeting those harms (e.g., punishing actual littering), rather than suppressing distribution itself.
- An ordinance is invalid when it is directed at suppressing distribution of information rather than preventing specific, nonexpressive harms.
- A law’s facial overbreadth is not cured by an enforcement policy that applies it only in particular circumstances.
- Discretionary licensing of expressive activity, especially based on assessments of an applicant’s character or reliability, operates as a prior restraint inconsistent with constitutional protections.

## Conclusion

The Court held that municipalities may not broadly prohibit or burden pamphleteering in public streets, or condition door-to-door distribution on discretionary police licensing, merely to reduce litter or maintain order; instead, cities must use narrower measures that address concrete harms without suppressing protected expression.


Schneider v. State, 308 U.S. 147 (1939)