WASHINGTON — Despite court rulings that soliciting money is protected as free speech, some cities and at least one state are considering new restrictions on panhandling in traffic medians, arguing it’s a safety hazard.

New Mexico’s Democratic governor this year and a Republican Arizona lawmaker last year proposed statewide bans on street soliciting, though neither passed. Wilmington, North Carolina, passed a similar one regulation this yearand Roanoke, Virginia, have stepped up enforcement of one law which has been on the books since last year. Homeless advocates have sued over a similar law in Jacksonville, Florida.

A handful of cities are turning to incentives as a solution: Oklahoma City, where courts struck down a ban on panning; offers city cleanup work to panhandlers. Philadelphia and Fairfax County, Virginia, have similar programs, and Albuquerque, New Mexico’s largest city, recently reinstated one.

Efforts have grown amid a nationwide homelessness crisis, with more people visibly begging on the streets and higher pedestrian fatalities compared to before the pandemic. Supporters of the bans argue they promote safety, but opponents say there is no evidence such restrictions protect pedestrians and that they infringe on free speech. Court decisions have been mixed.

Many of the recent laws or proposed laws banning pedestrians on narrow medians followed one in Sandy City, Utah, which a federal appeals court upheld in 2019. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case in 2020, leaving the law in place. The regulation makes it “unlawful for an individual to sit or stand, in or on an unlined median, or any median of less than 36 inches for any period of time.”

In New Mexico — which has the highest percentage pedestrian fatalities in any state, according to a Governors Highway Safety Association report based on data from 2023 — Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham this year proposed a state law banning pedestrians on narrow medians. Some New Mexico cities, including Santa Fe and Española, already have such bans. Benjamin Baker, a public safety adviser to the governor, said it makes sense to keep panhandlers and others off the medians near cars.

Like other proponents of the bans, Baker acknowledged that there is no clear link between panhandling and pedestrian deaths. But he said it makes intuitive sense to ban seemingly dangerous activities like standing on narrow medians in heavy traffic.

“Exercising free speech is not the problem,” said Baker, who added that panning from a safe area is fine.

But legislators from her own party declined to sponsor Lujan Grisham’s bill. And during a public safety special session in July called by the governor, the bill sole sponsor was Republican state Sen. Mark Moores of Albuquerque.

“Pan management just got out of hand across New Mexico and primarily Albuquerque,” Moores said. “It’s just unsafe. People are running back and forth through heavy traffic. We have to balance their right to free speech with public safety.”

Despite her team loss, Lujan Grisham continued to lobby for her proposed bill in a series of town halls around the state in July, saying she wants a statewide version of the city of Española’s 2022 law banning loitering on narrow medians.

Efforts elsewhere

The American Civil Liberties Union has opposite a new law in Bangor, Maine, passed in June, banning pedestrians from medians less than 6 feet wide in high-speed areas.

Courts have struck down some similar laws. 2020, US Circuit Court of Appeals Tenth struck down a ban in Oklahoma City, which ruled that the city had failed to prove a clear safety concern due to pedestrians in the middle of the street. The US Supreme Court declined to take up the case and upheld the verdict.

Scout Katovich, an attorney with the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality, said pedestrian safety is not a credible motive for the latest legislation.

“Everybody talks about how we have to get rid of these panhandlers, ‘We don’t want to see unhoused people,’ and then they turn around and say this is about safety. That’s not going to fly,” Katovich said.

In Roanoke, Virginia, prohibition of panhandling on medians less than 4 feet wide have been on the books since last year and enforcement is on the rise, with about a hundred $25 summonses issued since the spring, Roanoke Police Capt. Andrew Pulley said. Larger fines or prison terms could follow for repeat offenders, he said.

Police have received complaints about panhandlers, and the city is trying to respond to them, Pulley said. Issuing citations deters panhandling, he said, but the effect is usually temporary.

“It’s like driving fast. When we’re there it’s better, but you go away and come back and it’s there again.”

In Arizona, Republican state Sen. John Kavanagh, who had sponsored anti-panhandling legislation in 2015, last year submitted a bill orientation panhandling on the traffic media. A committee approved the bill along party lines, but it did not reach the Senate floor.

A legal challenge

In Florida, Homeless Voice, a newspaper that hires homeless people to distribute it on the street and solicit donations, sued the city of Jacksonville over its new law banning panhandling in high-traffic areas, which prevented many of its workers from working in the city.

Workers could earn up to about $100 a day, often enough to share a hotel room or even pay rent in some areas, said Sean Cononie, publisher of Homeless Voice.

“We’re going backwards in this country,” Cononie said. “People think homeless people are lazy, and they’re not lazy. This is hard work.”

Jacksonville Homeless Voice’s staff has been reduced from 90 recently to eight, he said, because police have warned his workers to stop asking drivers for money on the street.

In the Jacksonville case, federal judge Timothy Corrigan allowed the city to continue enforcing the law during an upcoming trial, noting that the city offered to suspend enforcement on public sidewalks and enforce it only on medians. Corrigan called it a “clash between First Amendment rights and public safety concerns,” but did not say how he might rule.

In court papers, Jacksonville defended the ban, saying it is motivated by concerns for pedestrian safety and that the city respects Homeless Voices’ right to solicit money on sidewalks but not “in and on the city’s busiest thoroughfares” without a necessary permit.

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