Abstract
Laws restricting panhandling are exceptionally common across the country. States, municipalities, and courts have been struggling to discern their First Amendment implications, and a circuit split has emerged over content neutrality and the application of these laws to public streets and sidewalks. To answer the First Amendment questions these laws present, this Article divides them into two categories: those that prohibit all charitable solicitation, and those that prohibit only panhandling on behalf of oneself. It argues that the former are content neutral, while the latter are viewpoint discriminatory. Panhandling laws that discriminate on the basis of viewpoint fail wherever they are applied. For contentneutral solicitation laws, the Court’s recent decision in McCullen v. Coakley changed how to think about their application on public streets and sidewalks, particularly when they create large buffer zones to prohibit solicitation near certain public places. This Article is the first to discuss what McCullen means for solicitation laws. It argues that the majority of solicitation laws now fail when applied in a traditional public forum, while they survive when applied in a limited public forum, nonpublic forum, or where there is a captive audience.
Recommended Citation
Cynthia Barmore,
Panhandling After McCullen v. Coakley,
16
Nev. L.J.
585
(2016).
Available at:
https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/nlj/vol16/iss2/5