Open door policy

Supreme Court Upholds Jehovah's Witness House-To-- House Evangelism

To hear municipal officials in Stratton, Ohio, tell it, residents of the village were under a veritable state of siege from an army of aggressive salesman going door to door hawking everything from cheap perfume to raw meat.

To remedy the situation, Stratton officials adopted an ordinance that some felt went too far: Anyone wishing to canvass from house to house in the town of just under 300 for nearly any reason had to register with city officials, disclose their names and obtain a permit. The permit had to be produced on demand.

The new law, passed in 1998, was controversial, but the first people to complain about it were not sales agents bent on profiting from the sale of vacuum cleaners or encyclopedias. They were Jehovah's Witnesses.

Leaders of the Christian religious denomination in nearby Wellsville were convinced that Stratton Mayor John M. Abdalla had it in for them, not pushy salesmen. They claim that in 1998, Abdalla told a group of Witnesses they were not welcome in Stratton. Shortly after that incident, Frank Bruzzese, village attorney, drafted the new ordinance.

Stratton's law, the Witnesses argued, placed unconstitutionally burdensome restrictions on all forms of speech - commercial, political and religious. The Witnesses, who are accustomed to going to court to protect their rights, promptly sued.

Two federal courts upheld the regulation, accepting Stratton Is argument that the law was designed to protect residents from unwanted solicitations. But on June 17 the U.S. Supreme Court took a different view. Ruling 8-1, the high court declared the ordinance unconstitutional.

Strictly speaking, the legal controversy was not a church-state case. When it agreed to accept Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of New York v. Village of Stratton on Oct. 15, 2001, the high court said it would limit its inquiry to a fairly narrow free-speech question: Does the Stratton ordinance violate protections that the First Amendment accords to anonymous pamphleteering?

As a practical matter, however, the decision is bound to have church-state ramifications. Had the ordinance been upheld, com unities around the nation would have been free to place similar restrictions on evangelism and other forms of speech touching on religious, philosophical and political topics.

On the day the high court decision was announced, AU Executive Director Barry W. Lynn hailed the action.

"People who want to talk about their views with others shouldn't have to ask the government for permission first," said Lynn. "The First Amendment protects the right of Americans to spread their views. Whether it's the Jehovah's Witnesses asking people to join their denomination or an atheist group asking people to reject religion, Americans shouldn't have to get a permit from the government to spread their opinions."

Continued Lynn, "People who are bothered by door-to-door evangelism can always say, `No, thanks' and shut the door or post a `No Soliciting' sign. Heavy-handed government regulations on speech stifle our basic freedoms."

The court majority agreed. Justice John Paul Stevens observed, "It is offensive - not only to the values protected by the First Amendment, but to the very notion of a free society - that in the context of everyday public discourse a citizen must first inform the government of her desire to speak to her neighbors and then obtain a permit to do so.

"Even if the issuance of permits by the mayor's office is a ministerial task that is performed promptly and at no cost to the applicant," he continued, "a law requiring a permit to engage in such speech constitutes a dramatic departure from our national heritage and constitutional tradition."

Seven justices agreed with Stevens that the ordinance is unconstitutional, although Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence M. Thomas wrote separately to note that they did not agree with all of Stevens' reasoning.

The lone dissenter was Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. Rehnquist argued that the ordinance served the valid purpose of combating crime. In his dissent, Rehnquist mentioned a recent case from Hanover, N.H., involving two Dartmouth College professors who were murdered by two teenagers who came to their door claiming to be taking a survey about environmental issues.

Rehnquist also asserted that the law did not squelch speech by requiring groups to apply for a government permit. He wrote that "those without permits may communicate on public sidewalks, on street corners, through mail, or through the telephone."

Stevens did not find Rehnquist's argument persuasive. The ordinance, Stevens noted, does little to protect residents from crime since "it seems unlikely that the absence of a permit would preclude criminals from knocking on doors and engaging in conversations not covered by the ordinance. They might, for example, ask for directions or permission to use the telephone, or pose as surveyors or census takers."

The Witnesses' victory in the Ohio case marks the latest in a string of impressive legal wins that the denomination's lawyers have racked up at the Supreme Court since 1940. In a famous case from that year, the high court ruled that Witness children could be forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools, but just three years later the court reversed itself and ruled that Witnesses - and by extension other Americans - could not be forced to say the Pledge. (Witnesses do not believe in flag salutes, holding that the flag is a "graven image" and that worship of it is forbidden by the Book of Exodus.) In another high court case, the Witnesses successfully challenged a Pennsylvania law that required groups to pay a tax before distributing literature.