Panhandling lawsuit over for Jacksonville, starting for St. Johns County

Oct 18, 2024

A lawsuit challenging a Jacksonville law that prevents panhandling at intersections is finished as the same law firm launches a new case against a similar law in St. Johns County.

The nonprofit Florida Justice Institute filed notice in federal court Monday that its client, the homeless services nonprofit the Cosac Foundation, was dropping the suit filed in February with the goal of overturning a Jacksonville ordinance banning solicitation on streets and sidewalks.

The same day that case was dropped, lawyers who handled the suit joined attorneys from the nonprofit Southern Legal Counsel in suing St. Johns County on behalf of three men who’ve panhandled to support themselves.

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“Requesting help in public places is an activity protected by the First Amendment,” Dante Trevisani, the Florida Justice Institute’s litigation director, said in a release about the new case. “State and federal courts in Florida and all around the country have repeatedly found panhandling restrictions along public rights of way to be unconstitutional.”

The law being challenged in St. Johns bans “any physical interaction” between a pedestrian and anyone in an automobile, and forbids stopping, sitting or remaining in a highway median except to cross a road.

“In effect, the ordinance can be enforced to prohibit all forms of expressive activity, including standing, holding a sign, soliciting, receiving donations, and leafletting on sidewalks,” argues the suit filed Monday on behalf of county residents Joseph LaValley, Thomas Smith and Dylan Pagan.

St. Johns adopted its law in May 2023, about three months after Jacksonville passed its own law against interacting with people in cars.

The St. Johns ordinance has been used since then to cite roughly 34 people, four of whom were taken to jail, according to the lawsuit, which said the ordinance “has been enforced against poor and homeless people.”

The new case continues a string of challenges Florida Justice Institute attorneys have brought against local governments in North Florida. In addition to the Jacksonville lawsuit, the lawyers had challenged laws by Lake City and Columbia County on behalf of the Cosac Foundation, which distributes a newspaper called the Homeless Voice that's handed out at intersections to raise donations. Columbia County filed a settlement notice last month and Lake City offered a $75,000 payment that was accepted to end its case.

Attorneys in the Jacksonville case told Chief U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan in June the city and the plaintiffs had agreed to have their case decided in a bench trial, with no jury. Corrigan ordered the case closed case Tuesday after getting the dismissal notice.