Library Leaflet Ban Undone in California Court. In late June, a northern California county judge issued an injunction against enforcement of a municipal ban on pamphleteering around a local public library and, in doing so, managed to please both the American Civil Liberties Union and a regional Tea Party group. Shasta County Superior Court Judge Monica Marlow ruled that a city ordinance seeking to restrict, among other things, the distribution of leaflets and “offensively coarse utterance, gesture or display” in and around the Redding Municipal Library, was both too restrictive and too broad, and therefore an impermissible exercise of governmental restriction on free expression. According to Judge Marlow, although many people might find leafleting behavior to be a nuisance, “annoyance and inconvenience are a small price to pay for preservation of our most cherished right.”
In September 2010, the Bostonian Tea Party planned to distribute pocket-size copies of the Constitution, quotes from the Founding Fathers and other materials to patrons coming and going from the entrance of the Redding public library to celebrate Constitution Week. According to one report posted on a website run by MAD 4 Shasta (an organization that appears to be a Redding-specific Tea Party group), the Bostonian Tea Party sought permission from local officials but was first informed that approval of this request would be contingent upon the library’s review and approval of the materials to be distributed. MAD 4 Shasta reports that the city then reversed its position and gave the Bostonian Tea Party permission to distribute the materials at the library entrance, promising that although pamphleteering guidelines would be drawn up, the group’s attorney would be permitted to chime in on those guidelines. Other sources report only that the Bostonian Tea Party executed its plan to engage in leafleting around the library during that week. The Record Searchlight, a local paper, reports that although the library opened in 2007, no other organization had requested permission from the city to distribute literature to patrons prior to the September event. However, the Record Searchlightdid not indicate whether any individual or organization had actually distributed literature around the library prior to that date.
Constitutions in hand, the Bostonian Tea Party set up shop in front of the Redding library. The next day the local chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution showed up to distribute similar materials to library comers and goers, part of a long-standing DAR tradition. When city officials tried to get the DAR to share space with the Tea Party group by consolidating tables on one side of the library entrance, the Bostonian Tea Party objected. The result of this public celebration of a holiday most Americans don’t know exists was that the Redding City Council drafted and on April 18 passed, by a vote of 4 to 1, a law to restrict the distribution of literature and the exercise of certain activities around the public library. The rule sought to corral pamphleteers into a 66-square-foot area just off the main entrance. The space would be made available to one group at a time by reservation. Windshield flyers, soliciting of donations and commercial advertising would be prohibited. The library director would have been empowered to issue warnings against any harassment, abusive behavior and “offensively coarse” language or gestures displayed by anyone attempting to press materials on library patrons. Violators could have been assessed fines of up to $500.
Both the ACLU and another Tea Party group, the North State Tea Party Alliance, filed actions seeking to keep the Redding municipal ban from being enforced until a ruling could be made on its constitutionality. The efforts of those organizations were successful. A suspension order was imposed in early May, and the late June ruling will keep the new law from being enforced as currently written.
Judge Marlow based her decision on the fact that a public library entrance and parking lot should be treated as a “traditional public forum” like a park or a plaza under California free speech laws, not a “limited public forum”—that is, an area where the government is acknowledged to have a compelling interest in the regulation of the manner, place and time in which people can exercise their right of free speech. Attention must be paid to the balance of interests between an individual’s right to be left alone and her neighbor’s right to distribute literature. “If the city’s goal is to protect passers-by from harassment, the restriction is not narrowly tailored to serve that purpose,” said Judge Marlow. “The reasonable expectation is that citizens entering the library are doing so for the primary purpose of being exposed to information which will add to their base of knowledge and ideas. [T]he library is an area dedicated to the free exchange of ideas.”
