Members tex071487 Posted February 13, 2009 Members Share Posted February 13, 2009 Lately i have been told my the manager of the Mobile Home Park that i could not pass out tracts. So i called the CLA and they sent me our rights as Christians to witness to anyone and anywhere. We as Christians need to learn the rights that The Constitution gives us. The CLA will help.GIBBS LAW FIRM, P.A. Attorneys and Counselors at Law 5666 SEMINOLE BOULEVARD, SUITE TWO TELEPHONE: (727) 399-8300 SEMINOLE, FLORIDA 33772 FACSIMILE: (727) 398-3907 Thank you for contacting the Christian Law Association about whether an apartment complex or trailer park manager can prohibit you from making door-to-door visits to invite individual tenants to religious meetings. Please consider this Memorandum as representative of your legal position and share a copy with the apartment complex or trailer park manager or anyone else you feel should be privy to this legal information. LEGAL OPINION MEMORANDUM I. Question Presented Can an apartment or trailer park manager prohibit a non-resident or a resident from making door-to-door visits to invite tenants of the trailer park or apartment complex to religious meetings? II. Summary As long as the individual tenants being visited do not object at the time of the visit or post a no-solicitation sign on their individual door, another tenant or a non-tenant may knock on the door at any reasonable time. It is each individual resident who retains the right to determine whether he desires the visit. The complex or trailer park manager may not make that decision globally for all residents. Either a tenant or non-tenant may visit apartment complex or trailer park residents and invite the occupants to a religious meeting. A court should protect the visitor?s freedom of speech in an area that is generally open to the public. A court should also protect the individual residents? freedom to determine for themselves whether they wish to receive information of their choosing. The right to restrict door-to-door communication belongs to the tenant or resident and not to the trailer park or apartment complex manager. III. Legal Analysis IV. Courts have acknowledged that allowing residents and non residents to make door-todoor visits to tenants even in private trailer parks or apartment complexes is protected by the right of free speech. The United States Supreme Court in Martin v. Struthers, 319 U.S. 114, 146-47 held: Freedom to distribute information to every citizen wherever he desires to receive it is so clearly vital to the preservation of a free society that, putting aside reasonable police and health regulations of time and manner of distribution, it must be fully preserved. In Walker v. Georgetown Housing Authority, the Massachusetts Supreme Court held that ?the constitutional right of the authority?s tenants to receive communications may not be abridged by the blanket prohibition of campaigning and soliciting.? 677 N.E.2d 1125, 1128 (1997). The court recognized that it is up to individual residents, even if they are not owners, to decide whether door-to-door communications are welcome. This court cited to the United States Supreme Court case, Martin v. Struthers: For centuries it has been a common practice in this and other countries for persons not specifically invited to go from home to home and knock on doors or ring doorbells to communicate ideas to the occupants or to invite them to political, religious, or other kinds of public meetings. Whether such visiting shall be permitted has in general been deemed to depend upon the will of the individual master of each household, and not upon the determination of the community. Martin v. Struthers, supra, 319 U.S. 141, 63 S.Ct. 862, 87 L.Ed. 1313. Id. at 1127. Note that this early Supreme Court decision specifically pertained to door-to-door communication with the purpose of inviting residents to religious meetings. It is traditional to allow the residents themselves, whether owners or tenants, to decide who they want to listen to at their doorstep. It is not the manager?s responsibly to infringe on the tenant?s right to choose what messages he wishes to hear. Another California Appellate decision in Smith v. Silvey, 197 Cal. Rptr. 15, 19 (1983), also recognized that it is up to the residents, not a mobile home park owner or apartment manager, to dictate which house-to-house distributor?s ideas they will listen to. Silvey?s right to ?contact? the residents of the Park through the medium of printed literature or even personal visits is a constitutionally protected right of expression in the absence of protest by the recipients. The burden of restricting the ?house-to-house distribution of ideas? falls on the homeowner; that is, no governmentally imposed restriction should occur until after the caller has been warned by the householder that the latter does not want to be disturbed. V. The rule that ?it?s up to the tenants to decide who they will allow at their doorstep? does not change whether the apartment complex or trailer park is private property or public housing. The same rule of ?it?s up to the residents and no one else to decide whether to have communication at their doorstep? applies globally?whether to public housing (Walker) or private (Smith), whether to private apartments (Walker) or trailer parks (Smith). The court in Walker would extend the same guidelines that governed its ruling for the public housing complex to private developments. A technical distinction that its ways are not accepted public ways but rather appear to be private ways open to the public makes no difference. The constitutional right of the authority?s tenants to receive communications may not be abridged by the blanket prohibition of campaigning and solicitation. Id. at 1128. Even if the apartment complex or trailer park is private, the streets and sidewalks leading to the tenant?s door are open to visitors to individual living quarters. Therefore, your church visitation team has a right to knock on the tenants? doors. Only if the tenants themselves object or post no solicitation signs can the visitors be prohibited from knocking on the door again. VI. Both residents and non-residents have the right to engage in door-to-door communication. Neither Walker nor Smith limited the right to door-to-door communication to other tenants or residents of the same complex. The opportunity to visit tenants or residents of the complex extends equally to non-tenants and nonresidents. Since the 1930s, courts have protected the rights of religious people who are too poor to own a printing press or other publishing accoutrements for the dissemination of information and have permitted such persons to disseminate their views by means that are affordable?such as the distribution of free literature, visitation from house to house, and other free speech activities in the public forum areas of city streets and parks. Cases upholding these rights for decades have included Schneider v. State, 308 U.S. 147 (1939), Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940) and Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105 (1943)?to cite only a few in this long line of cases. Conclusion Church visitations to private apartments and trailer parks may only be prohibited when the tenants themselves choose to object individually to a particular visit. The apartment complex or trailer park manager may not make a blanket prohibition on behalf of the entire complex. However, if an individual tenant opposes the church visitor?s presence on his doorstep, the visitor must leave immediately and must not return to that particular address again. If the visitor returns, the tenant or resident of the apartment or trailer could have the visitor arrested for trespass. Even when one particular tenant objects, church visitors may continue to visit all other residences in the apartment complex or trailer park when the householders have not objected. It is the responsibility of each individual tenant or resident, not of the complex manager, to object to a visit. Please feel free to share this information with any complex owner or manager. If you have any questions, please contact us. Sincerely, Gibbs Law Firm, P.A. KrisAnne Hall Admitted in Florida Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members John81 Posted February 14, 2009 Members Share Posted February 14, 2009 Good to know. Thank you for posting that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Wilchbla Posted February 14, 2009 Members Share Posted February 14, 2009 Wow! This is great to know. No only if the judge knows this if your landlord takes you to court. Judges don't always follow the law. Wil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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