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A rather interesting freedom of speech lawsuit was filed right here in middle Tennessee recently by the ACLU on behalf of The Contributor – a local street newspaper championing the homeless. The paper’s purpose is primarily to educate people about homelessness, and to provide the homeless with meaningful work selling the paper. Vendors of The Contributor boast an impressive 35% rate of securing housing from sales of the paper.
The Contributor is not a religious or faith based operation, but it does receive a great deal of support from the faith community. Needless to say, the faith community and the ACLU don't often land on the same side of an issue. I personally don't find myself aligned with the ACLU very often, so I figured I'd take time to give credit where credit is due.
Most residents of Nashville have no doubt noticed people on the street corners all over town selling The Contributor. Some vendors of The Contributor, though, attempted to set up shop in the nearby suburb of Brentwood. The City of Brentwood responded by issuing citations to two of the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit citing a city ordinance which makes it illegal to “occupy any portion of any public street, alley, sidewalk or right-of-way for the purpose of storing, selling or exhibiting any goods, wares, merchandise or materials." Now if you read that carefully and thought to yourself that such a law just seems far too broad, you would be correct.
The ACLU filed suit alleging that the Brentwood ordinance violated the plaintiffs’ freedom of speech, expression and the press, guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The ACLU claimed that the ordinance was not narrowly tailored to serve any justifications that the city of Brentwood may have for such an ordinance.
The ACLU was right. This is a textbook First Amendment case. Fortunately, the City of Brentwood acknowledged as much and quickly amending the ordinance such that vendors may now sell newspapers on Brentwood sidewalks. The case is still ongoing with respect to vendors’ access to the streets - but I would predict this issue also being resolved in favor of The Contributor in one way or another.
The Contributor is doing great work and I applaud them. I also applaud (dare I say it) the ACLU for defending an organization like The Contributor who likely lacks the resources to defend itself.