The legal action comes after the Arkansas city refuses to allow Adventist students to share their beliefs.
Seventh-day Adventist students from self-supporting Ouchita Hills found that the city of White Hall (pop. 5,500) has an ordinance that prevents literature evangelism from door to door. The city’s local ordinance forbids any door-to-door solicitation and expression of ideas unless those who wish to share their religious beliefs obtain a permit from the city, pay a fee, and share significant personal information and pass a “satisfactory” investigation and review, according to the SDA Church.
After seeking exemptions for religious reasons, and after contacting the police chief and attempting to resolve the issue administratively with the mayor, the Arkansas-Louisiana Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and two of its members filed a lawsuit on January 19 against the city of White Hall, asking the court to declare the ordinance unconstitutional and a violation of the first amendment right to free speech.
“If allowed to stand, the type of restrictions White Hall seeks to impose would stop door-to-door literature evangelism,” said Todd McFarland, associate general counsel at the General Conference in Silver Spring, MD.
The lawsuit over the ordinance alleges it places an overly broad restriction on speech, levees an unfair tax on that speech with the permit application fee and vests too much power in city officials to decide when permits will be granted or denied based on unclear terms of something being a nuisance.
Courts have routinely rejected similar government interference with protected rights such as free speech. The Church is seeking $1 as symbolic damages.
Mayor Noel Foster responded to the lawsuit. “The ordinance doesn’t prohibit anybody from soliciting as long as they go through the process to obtain a permit. We would not prohibit anybody’s First Amendment rights.”
Perhaps the mayor needs a little lesson in the nature of permits. If a city can require a permit for solicitation, it can also control or prevent the solicitation. That is the purpose of the permit.
“When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near.” Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 5, page 451
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