536 U.S. 150 (2002)
The petitioners Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. and the Wellsville, Ohio, Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio against the Village of Stratton, Ohio, and its mayor.1 They sought declaratory and injunctive relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that the Village's ordinance regulating door-to-door canvassing infringed their constitutional rights.2 The District Court conducted a bench trial and upheld the ordinance after imposing some narrowing constructions on its provisions.3 The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the District Court's judgment.4 The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the case.5
The Village of Stratton is a small community in southern Ohio with a population of approximately 280 residents.6 The Village enacted Ordinance No. 1998-5 in 1998, which was later amended, to regulate uninvited peddling and solicitation on private property.7 The ordinance requires any canvasser intending to promote a cause on private property to register with the mayor's office and obtain a solicitation permit without charge.8 Applicants must provide their name and home address, a description of the purpose, the name of their affiliated organization, the length of time desired, and the specific addresses they intend to visit.9 Permit holders must carry the permit and exhibit it upon request by police or residents.10
The ordinance defines canvassing to include going upon private residential property for the purpose of advertising, promoting, selling, or explaining any product, service, organization, or cause.11 It applies to the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses, who go door to door distributing religious literature without charge and accepting donations.12 The Village interpreted the ordinance to cover petitioners' ministry even though they do not consider themselves solicitors.13 Residents may file no-solicitation forms and post signs to prohibit uninvited canvassers, and only 32 residents had done so at the time of trial.14
Petitioners are a not-for-profit corporation that publishes Bibles and religious periodicals for Jehovah's Witnesses and one of their local congregations supervising about 59 members in the area.15 They allege that their religion requires them to preach from house to house as commanded in the Bible, and they would not seek a permit because it would insult God.16 Leaders testified that they honor no-solicitation signs.17 The mayor testified that the ordinance was designed to protect residents from fraud and con artists, though petitioners introduced evidence suggesting hostility toward their ministry.18 The District Court credited the mayor's testimony regarding the ordinance's purpose.19
Whether a municipal ordinance requiring a permit prior to engaging in door-to-door advocacy of a political or religious cause and to display the permit upon demand violates the First Amendment protection accorded to anonymous pamphleteering or discourse?20
The First Amendment, made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, protects door-to-door advocacy and the distribution of literature from prior restraints that require government permission and disclosure of identity before engaging in protected speech.21
Yes. The ordinance requires petitioners to register with the mayor, provide their names, addresses, and intended locations, and carry and display the permit.22 This requirement directly burdens the anonymous and spontaneous advocacy that petitioners' religious ministry entails.23 Petitioners refused to apply on scriptural grounds.24
Only a small number of residents opted out via no-solicitation forms.25 The requirement sweeps broadly to cover religious, political, and charitable causes.26 There is no evidence of fraud or crime tied specifically to such activity in the Village.27 The permit process imposes an objective burden on speech that the facts establish petitioners view as divinely mandated.28
It eliminates the possibility of spontaneous expression on weekends or holidays until approval is obtained.29
The ordinance violates the First Amendment on its face.30
Related opinions on this issue
Joined by Souter And Ginsburg, Jj.
Justice Breyer joins the Court's opinion.31 He writes separately to emphasize that the crime prevention justification for the ordinance is not strong.32 Stratton did not rely on this rationale in the courts below.33
Its general references to deterring crime cannot fairly be construed to include anything other than the fraud discussed specifically.34 Legislators in even the smallest town are perfectly able to state their real reasons for passing an ordinance.35 If the village thought preventing burglaries and violent crimes was an important justification, it would have said so.36
It is also intuitively implausible that the ordinance serves any governmental interest in preventing such crimes.37 Several categories of potential criminals remain untouched by the ordinance.38 The Court has never accepted mere conjecture as adequate to carry a First Amendment burden.39
Joined by Thomas, J.
Justice Scalia concurs in the judgment.40 He agrees with many but not all of the reasons set forth in the opinion for the Court.41 He does not agree that one cause of the ordinance's invalidity is that some people have a religious objection to applying for a permit.42
Others might prefer silence to speech licensed by a petty official due to firm convictions about constitutional rights.43 If a licensing requirement is otherwise lawful, it is not invalidated by the fact that some people will choose for religious reasons to forgo speech rather than observe it.44 That would convert an invalid free-exercise claim into a valid free-speech claim.45
The free-speech claim would exempt everybody thanks to Jehovah's Witnesses.46 The fairytale category of patriotic citizens who would rather be silenced than licensed would place free-speech jurisprudence in a sorry state.47
Chief Justice Rehnquist dissents.48 He contends that the ordinance is a valid content-neutral time, place, and manner restriction under intermediate scrutiny.49 It serves the important interests of preventing fraud and crime through a discretionless permit process approved for decades.50
The ordinance leaves open ample alternatives for communication.51 It does not require the Village to suffer its own crime wave before acting.52 The Court ignores longstanding precedent that has upheld such permit requirements.53
The doctrine fashioned today contravenes well-established precedent and renders local governments impotent to address safety threats that canvassers pose.54 The permit requirement both deters and helps detect wrongdoing.55 Neighborly vigilance in small towns can prevent serious crimes when canvassers lack permits.56
Whether the ordinance is content-based or content-neutral?57
A regulation of speech is content-based if it distinguishes between types of speech based on the content or message conveyed and is therefore subject to strict scrutiny, while content-neutral regulations of the time, place, or manner of speech are subject to intermediate scrutiny if narrowly tailored to significant governmental interests and leaving open ample alternative channels.58
No. The ordinance applies to all canvassers promoting any cause without regard to the particular message.5960 Its coverage extends to religious ministry, political candidates, and charitable groups alike.61 The Village applied the ordinance uniformly to petitioners despite their noncommercial activity.62 This renders the ordinance content-neutral even though the Court ultimately found it invalid under intermediate scrutiny for other reasons.63
The ordinance is content-neutral.64
Whether the ordinance is narrowly tailored to serve the Village's interests in preventing fraud, crime, and protecting residents' privacy?65
Even a content-neutral regulation must be narrowly tailored to serve significant governmental interests without burdening substantially more speech than necessary, and the existence of less restrictive alternatives such as no-solicitation signs demonstrates a failure of narrow tailoring.66
No. The ordinance is not narrowly tailored.6768 The Village's interests in fraud prevention and privacy are already served by the unchallenged no-solicitation registration process that only 32 residents used.69 There is no evidence in the facts of actual fraud or crime linked to door-to-door religious canvassing.70 The permit requirement applies indiscriminately to petitioners' donation-accepting ministry and political speech alike.71 It lacks any verification mechanism that would actually deter criminals.72
The ordinance is not narrowly tailored.
Whether the permit requirement impermissibly burdens anonymous speech, religious exercise, and spontaneous expression?73
A permit requirement that forces disclosure of identity and prior approval before engaging in door-to-door advocacy burdens the First Amendment interests in anonymous speech recognized in cases involving handbill distribution, religious exercise that views government permission as an affront to divine authority, and spontaneous political expression that cannot await bureaucratic processing.74
Yes. The permit requirement forces petitioners to disclose their names, addresses, and planned locations in a public filing before they can conduct the house-to-house ministry their religion commands.75 This eliminates anonymity for those who might fear retaliation and prevents spontaneous decisions to canvass on holidays or weekends.76 The facts show petitioners would not apply for a permit on scriptural grounds, and the ordinance covers a wide range of noncommercial causes.77
The permit requirement impermissibly burdens protected speech.78