A Christian missionary organization is suing the City of Puyallup over the right to solicit donations door-to-door.
The United States Mission, a nonprofit that provides men’s transitional housing in cities along the West Coast, says that an anti-solicitation ordinance in Puyallup imposes unconstitutional restraints on the group’s right to free speech and religious exercise.
The group goes door-to-door in other cities throughout the South Sound without problems of this magnitude, a group official said.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington filed a complaint on the nonprofit’s behalf last week in U.S. District Court.
Under a Puyallup law enacted in 2004, individuals soliciting monetary contributions must apply for a license and go through a criminal background check.
City officials said in a statement that the law aims to keep con artists and dangerous people from gaining access to people’s homes.
“The law was enacted to help protect Puyallup’s residents from criminals who have convictions for larceny, fraud, assault, domestic violence crimes, sex crimes, drug-related crimes, or crimes against children and/or vulnerable adults,” the city said in a written statement issued Monday.
Many of the men going door-to-door for the United States Mission have criminal backgrounds.
But the mission and the state ACLU say that Puyallup’s anti-solicitation ordinance amounts to unlawful prior restraint of free speech that ultimately prevents the mission from doing its work.
“In order for a religious organization – especially a smaller religious organization — to get by, they have to solicit funds,” said Harry Williams, a staff lawyer with the ACLU of Washington. “This is very different from someone going door-to-door selling vacuum cleaners.”
Williams said that federal and state courts have protected religious organizations’ right to knock on doors without a government-issued permit in the past.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 struck down a law in the Village of Stratton, Ohio, that would have required a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses to register with the mayor’s office before distributing pamphlets door-to-door.
The Supreme Court also ruled in 1988 that a North Carolina law requiring professional fundraisers to be licensed was unconstitutional.
An officer with the United States Mission said that door-to-door fundraising is an integral part of the group’s religious practice.
“Our whole purpose as a religious organization is to evangelize and practice the Social Gospel,” said Brian Jones of Portland, secretary general of the mission. “Engaging people at their homes to get them involved is part of our religious doctrine.”
Many of the mission’s representatives were formerly homeless and are going through rehabilitation, Jones said. Puyallup’s background check requirement bars many of those individuals from practicing their religion, he said.
All mission representatives who go door-to-door are carefully screened, he added.
“We have no convicted sex offenders or anyone with excessive violent behavior or anything like that,” Jones said. “They do wonderful, wonderful work.”
The organization is based in San Jose, Calif., with two missionary facilities in Seattle.
Puyallup’s anti-solicitation law provides exemptions for newspaper couriers, political canvassers and farmers selling produce, among others.
The city’s written statement says that other communities in the Puget Sound area have laws regulating solicitation, including Tacoma and Auburn. But Jones said the United States Mission hasn’t had to take any other city in the region to court since 2001, when it won a case against the City of Medina.
A U.S. District Court Judge ruled in that case that Medina’s anti-solicitation laws were unconstitutional, violating the missionary group’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights, court papers say.
Melissa Santos: 253-552-7058
melissa.santos@thenewstribune.com
