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
- 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.
- Whether a municipality’s interest in preventing litter and maintaining clean streets justifies prohibiting hand-to-hand distribution of literature to willing recipients.
- 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.