A driver hands money to a man panhandling at University Boulevard at Beach Boulevard in Jacksonville. | Dan Scanlan, Jacksonville Today
Published on October 16, 2024 at 3:03 pm
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Civil rights organizations say St. Johns County’s ban on begging for money along roadways is unconstitutional, and they’re taking the county to court.
The Florida Justice Institute and Southern Legal Counsel filed a lawsuit this week in U.S. District Court on behalf of three St. Johns County plaintiffs targeting an ordinance the county approved last year.
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St. Johns County says the ordinance was put on the books to keep drivers and solicitors safe, but Chelsea Dunn, an attorney with Southern Legal Counsel, says it fits within a greater pattern across the state of trying to keep unhoused people out of sight and out of mind.
Panhandling challenge in Jax
The legal challenge comes at a time when a similar challenge to a Jacksonville rule is playing out in the courts. Other suits have been filed in Fort Lauderdale, Daytona Beach, Pompano Beach, Fort Myers, Tampa, West Palm Beach and Miami, the Southern Legal Counsel says.
The nonprofit law firm and the Florida Justice Institute are thinking beyond St. Johns County.
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Ultimately, Dunn says, the goal would be to win their case and establish a legal precedent that would affect Jacksonville and communities outside Northeast Florida.
“These communities are passing these laws and ordinances as shortcuts to try to make homelessness less visible without actually addressing the underlying problem,” Dunn tells Jacksonville Today. “Ultimately, it would be much less expensive for our communities to actually provide appropriate shelter and affordable supportive housing that would better address and solve the problem of homelessness than to pass these ordinances that criminalize this behavior.”
In a statement issued to Jacksonville Today, a St. Johns County spokesperson said they have not yet reviewed the lawsuit but that they stand by the measure.
“All of St Johns County’s ordinances are designed and directed to intentionally provide for and protect the health, safety, and well-being of its community,” the spokesperson says. “Our ordinance is not about specific people but about purposeful public safety.”
Dunn describes challenging rules against panhandling across the south like a game of Whac-A-Mole. The goal, she says, is to have more communities tackle the root causes that lead to solicitation and homelessness rather than focusing on punitive regulations.
“This is something that is becoming more and more of an issue in Florida as we see big storms come through and destroy houses,” Dunn says, “and as property values continue to increase across the state and make it really unaffordable for people who are working at a minimum wage or similarly low-paying jobs.”
30 people cited
The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction that would halt the enforcement of the rule until a ruling is reached.
Since it was unanimously approved by the St. Johns County Commission in May 2023, the county has cited more than 30 people for panhandling, and at least four of them have been arrested, the lawsuit says.
The county’s ordinance never explicitly uses the words “panhandling” or “begging,” but it does target “the unexpected presence of pedestrians near a motor vehicle within the traveled portion of a road” as well as “any physical interaction between a pedestrian and an occupant of a motor vehicle, including the transfer of any product, material, or monies …”
The lawsuit against the county argues that the rule isn’t specific enough and that it runs afoul of a person’s First Amendment right to, as the Supreme Court puts it, “charitable appeals for funds.”
Even if the rule prohibits more roadway activity than just panhandling, the genesis of the ordinance is clear, Dunn says.
During a County Commission meeting in January 2023, Commissioner Christian Whitehurst asked then County Attorney David Migut to draft an ordinance like one Clay County had recently approved.
“You’re seeing people who are not homeless,” Whitehurst said. “These are folks who make their livelihoods traveling the country to stand on medians and on corners basically asking for money. This is how they make their living.”
But Dunn says that’s not true — all three of the plaintiffs in the case are St. Johns County residents who, for one reason or another, found themselves unable to work and support themselves.
One plaintiff is Dylan Torres Pagan. The lawsuit says he stopped panhandling due to his fear of being arrested. According to the lawsuit, Pagan now has a job and doesn’t feel he needs to panhandle, but he is still living on the streets.
Dunn says that rather than criminalizing protected speech, she wants to see communities pursue initiatives like rent control and eviction protection and build additional shelters and affordable housing. These, she says, will do far more in the long run to keep people out of medians.
