24 - Proposed Panhandling Ordinance

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Item No. 24 memorandum TO: City Council Gene Anderson, Interim City Manager FROM: Stephanie H. Harris, City Attorney SUBJECT: PROPOSED PANHANDLING ORDINANCE DATE: January 22, 2020 BACKGROUND: In the last few weeks, the city has had several requests to enact an anti - panhandling ordinance. At its meeting on January 13th, council requested that I review some model ordinances relating to panhandling and report back as to the possibility of passing such an ordinance in Paris. STATUS OF ISSUE: I have researched this issue at length. One model ordinance, drafted by a former professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, is oft cited and takes into account the points most often raised by courts regarding panhandling ordinances. This area of the law has changed considerably since a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court case, Reed v. Town of Gilbert. While the law is still developing, it appears that the most legally defensible regulations will share these attributes: • They will avoid a blanket ban on panhandling, as such blanket bans are almost certainly unconstitutional. • They will regulate conduct rather than speech (e.g., regulation of standing or soliciting in a particularly dangerous location may be allowable, while regulation of holding a sign asking for money is probably not). • They should not apply to the entire city, but rather to specified areas of concern. • The regulation should apply not only to panhandling, but to all other similar types of activity such as charitable solicitations and political activities so as to avoid regulating only one particular type of speech or group of speakers. • The city should develop a strong factual record demonstrating (a) the nature of the threat to public safety; (b) the locations where that threat exists; and (c) that the threat is sufficient to warrant regulation. Such a record would need to comprise more than anecdotal evidence. The city should then cite this factual record within the ordinance itself.