The police officer who cited a homeless man for soliciting money in June said the man was obstructing traffic, which was the root of the officer’s decision to charge him with aggressive solicitation.
Officer Mario Ochoa’s statement was included in Hawaii County’s response to a request for a temporary restraining order by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Justin Guy, a homeless West Hawaii man who said the officer told him he could not panhandle anywhere. Ochoa denied making that statement, and said Guy was still at the Luhia Street intersection with Kaiwi Street after receiving the citation.
The ACLU is asking a U.S. District Court judge in Honolulu to overturn Hawaii County’s ordinance banning aggressive solicitation anywhere and the blanket ban of panhandling in all county parks. A hearing was scheduled for 9:30 a.m. today in Honolulu.
The thing is, Corporation Counsel Molly Stebbins said in her response to the TRO request, Justin Guy was not cited under the latter ban, because no one has been cited for panhandling in county parks at all in at least the last five years.
Further, Stebbins wrote, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld laws similar to Hawaii County’s aggressive panhandling limitations.
“Since solicitation for funds is inherently more disruptive and intrusive (than distributing literature), and prone to greater abuse, it is reasonable for the government to place restrictions upon it,” she wrote. “There is nothing unconstitutional about doing so.”
The government has “considerable latitude” to regulate how people conduct themselves, even if the conduct is being used to express a particular sentiment, the court document said.
The U.S. Supreme Court has voted to allow some “content neutral” bans, in which all solicitation is banned. The county’s ordinance is content neutral, Stebbins argued, because it restricts only solicitation in which one party is expected to immediately transfer money or objects to another person, and only at specific locations, such as within a certain distance of public toilets, ATMs, areas where traffic flow could be impacted, which county officials argue was the case here, or other areas in which public safety could be threatened.
“The county enacted the ordinance in order to protect the public from the dangers of aggressive solicitation,” Stebbins wrote. “The ordinance is narrowly tailored to protect the public, while permitting individuals to continue to solicit.”
Stebbins’ argument also questioned why the ACLU only now came forward to challenge the ban, which the County Council enacted in 1999.
The court filing included a sworn statement from Environmental Management Director Bobby Jean Leithead Todd, who served on the council from 1996 through 2003, about her own experience being followed to her vehicle by someone aggressively panhandling. At the time, Leithead Todd had two of her young children with her, she said, and she felt intimidated by the person asking for money. That experience helped shape the legislation, Stebbins wrote. The ordinance was also based on laws in other states that had already been upheld by the courts.