Advocacy organization focusing on labor issues brought action challenging city ordinance that required certain door-to-door solicitors to obtain a solicitor’s license prior to soliciting and that imposed an 8:00 p.m. curfew, and seeking a declaratory judgment that city’s ordinance unconstitutionally infringed on organization’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Organization and city cross-moved for summary judgment.
The District Court held that:
- Ordinance was content based restriction on speech;
- Ordinance was not narrowly tailored to further compelling government interest, and thus ordinance could not withstand strict scrutiny;
- Ordinance vested city’s licensing authority with subjective discretion to deny someone solicitor’s license on grounds that applicant was not of good moral character or repute, and thus was facially unconstitutional;
- Under First Amendment, curfew ordinance facially discriminated based on content of message being spoken and thus was content based restriction on speech; and
- Ordinance imposing curfew restriction was not narrowly tailored to further compelling government interest, and thus ordinance could not withstand strict scrutiny.