A driver hands money to a man panhandling at University Boulevard at Beach Boulevard. | Dan Scanlan, Jacksonville Today
Published on May 22, 2024 at 11:25 am
A federal judge won’t force Jacksonville to stop enforcing panhandling restrictions while the city fights a lawsuit arguing that its ordinance violates free speech rights.
In an order issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Corrigan denied a request by the COSAC Foundation Inc. for a preliminary injunction that would have temporarily halted enforcement of the panhandling ban. Corrigan heard arguments for and against the injunction last Friday at a hearing with attorneys on both sides of the lawsuit filed Feb. 26.
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The injunction was one early action sought by the COSAC Foundation in its ongoing challenge to the panhandling restrictions, which it argues violate the First Amendment and should be struck from Jacksonville’s books as unconstitutional.
The ordinance in question — passed by a 16-3 vote of the Jacksonville City Council in February 2023 — outlaws various forms of “solicitation” on and around many roads in Jacksonville. It also bars people from standing on roadway medians and bans physical interactions between pedestrians and occupants of a vehicle in traffic.
Those prohibitions have impacted the COSAC Foundation, a nonprofit based in South Florida, because it produces a free newspaper called The Homeless Voice that it distributes to motorists stopped at traffic lights statewide in exchange for voluntary donations. The foundation’s solicitors are homeless volunteers who say they’ve been threatened with arrest or citation by Jacksonville sheriff’s officers multiple times for distributing newspapers in the time since the ordinance took effect, according to the court complaint.
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Corrigan emphasized in his order that while he was denying the requested injunction, “this ruling does not predict how the court will ultimately rule” on the pending lawsuit.
The judge’s order cited two reasons for his denial of the injunction: the city’s promise not to enforce the law against anyone soliciting on public sidewalks and the lack of clarity over who might ultimately win in the pending lawsuit.
Based on the “limited record” of evidence on his docket to this point, Corrigan wrote, “the court is not able to say [the COSAC Foundation] is likely to succeed on the merits” of its claims when the case reaches a final resolution. Corrigan noted the lawsuit raised “substantial questions of law and fact” in a “clash between First Amendment rights and public safety concerns”.
The question of whether Jacksonville’s panhandling ban applies to sidewalks had been a sticking point in the hearing. After assistant general counsel Mary Margaret Giannini insisted the language of the ordinance didn’t include sidewalks as a restricted area, the judge prompted her “to affirm that on the record.”
“Sidewalks are not regulated by the ordinance, and so, there wouldn’t be any enforcement of the ordinance on sidewalks,” Giannini said. Corrigan accepted that representation and asked the city’s lawyer “to make sure law enforcement knows that.”
Aside from denying the requested injunction, the judge’s latest order also set a deadline for attorneys on each side of the case to jointly decide “the appropriate next step for the case” and advise the court in a filing by June 7.
The attorneys’ decision will center on whether the lawsuit should proceed to a jury trial — which is what the COSAC Foundation initially requested — or if it should instead be resolved through a different route, such as a bench trial or summary judgment issued by Corrigan.
This story is published through a partnership between Jacksonville Today and The Tributary.
