Free speech for the homeless

A city in Georgia agreed to pay $55,000 to settle a First Amendment lawsuit with an activist accused of panhandling, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression announced last week.

Along with the payment, the city of Alpharetta, Ga., will change several of its policies on panhandling after local police illegally arrested a man for holding a sign in front of the city hall. Panhandling occurs when someone, often a homeless person, asks others for money.

In January 2022, Jeff Gray held up a sign that read, “God Bless the Homeless Vets,” while standing on a public sidewalk outside of Alpharetta City Hall. Local police soon told Gray, a U.S. Army veteran himself, that he was engaging in illegal panhandling, and they threatened to arrest him if he continued. “You need to leave, there’s no panhandling here,” Department of Public Safety Lt. Arick Furr said. “Do you want to go to jail?”

Gray explained that he hadn’t asked for money, and even if he had, he had a legal right to do so.

Police then handcuffed Gray, seized and turned off his camera, searched him to find his identification, and banned Gray from Alpharetta’s downtown area.

Gray captured the interaction with officers on camera. He regularly demonstrates publicly and videos his experiences, posting them on his YouTube channel, called HonorYourOath Civil Rights Investigations. A resident of St. John’s County, Fla., Gray describes himself as a “civil rights investigator” and “First Amendment auditor.”

In 2023, Gray filed a lawsuit against the city to “vindicate his constitutional rights.” Alpharetta agreed to settle the case with Gray this July.

As part of the settlement, Alpharetta will now prohibit police officers from falsely asserting that panhandling is illegal, train them on First Amendment rights, discipline officers who violate these rights, and pay damages and attorney’s fees.

“The city of Alpharetta stomped on my right to freedom of speech,” Gray said in a news release. “Everyone has the right to free speech, including people who are poor or homeless.”

Americans have First Amendment-protected rights to both panhandle and demonstrate in public places, said FIRE attorney Adam Steinbaugh. Even if people find panhandling speech irritating or annoying, that doesn’t make it illegal, he said.

“Gray’s speech about the plight of homeless veterans, whether ‘panhandling’ or not … was clearly established as protected political expression,” the lawsuit said. “Even if Gray was ‘panhandling,’ it is clearly established that the First Amendment protects speakers asking others for help.”

While the case sought justice for Gray, the settlement will affect all Alpharetta citizens, Steinbaugh said. Public records show that Alpharetta police have regularly prohibited panhandling and threatened those who did so with law enforcement action. They also repeatedly told people that panhandling was illegal everywhere in the town.

There are legal ways to regulate panhandling, but it can’t be banned fully, Steinbaugh noted.

Creating legal regulations on panhandling isn’t a black-and-white issue, Steinbaugh said. Often, panhandling can be banned in certain locations such as next to ATMs or on the side of the road. However, standing on the sidewalk and asking for money on public grounds is fully lawful.

Across the country, various states are tackling panhandling in various ways, and courts have had mixed responses to regulations.

In 2019, a federal appeals court upheld a Sandy City, Utah, law banning pedestrians from sitting or standing on narrow medians. The regulation aimed to decrease panhandling activity over concerns for pedestrian safety. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case, keeping the law in place.

However, in 2021, a federal court in Rhode Island declared the city of Cranston’s anti-panhandling law unconstitutional after the American Civil Liberties Union challenged a city law that barred any person from entering a roadway to ask for money.

In February, a nonprofit organization filed a lawsuit that challenged a ban on panhandling at public intersections in Jacksonville, Fla. Lawmakers created the law to address perceived hostility from a growing number of homeless people on the streets. In May, the court denied the nonprofit’s motion to block the law but indicated it was not suggesting how it would ultimately rule on the merits of the lawsuit.

Other cities are trying to use incentives to decrease panhandling. In Oklahoma City, where a federal court of appeals struck down a panhandling ban in 2020, the city now offers paid city cleanup work to panhandlers.

Officials need to better understand the rights surrounding panhandling because those who have to ask for money might not know their own constitutional rights, Steinbaugh added. Even if they do know their rights, they might not have the resources needed to combat unlawful actions from the government, he said.

“If you’re already struggling with housing or food or money, trying to fight for a First Amendment right—it’s going to be pretty rare that someone’s going to be able to do that,” Steinbaugh said. “It can be very difficult to stand up for your own rights.”