The lawsuit filed in 2000 over a postal regulation that bars petitioning on internal post office sidewalks is the oldest pending lawsuit that affects minor party and independent candidates. Although there hasn’t been much news about the case in some time, it is alive and well. It is called Initiative & Referendum Institute v US Postal Service, and is in US District Court in Washington, DC. The judge has asked both sides to cooperate in producing additional evidence. Although much evidence has already been submitted, Judge Richard Roberts wants more.
Our campaign got booted from at least three of these types of post offices. Anything on a public street was fine. If the judge needs to know; Chatham, Ghent and Valatie NY. Every USPS employee was respectful to our effort regardless of this case’s standing.
Hello,
I’m a petition signature gatherer, and let me tell you… that there are only a very few post offices conjoined with a sidewalk left. It seems like the post office is going out of their way to make sure that all their old post offices that are on sidewalks are replaced with newer ones that aren’t. It’s beyond me how the U.S. post office was able to dupe a judge in banning signature gathering on all post office not on a sidewalk in the first place. Is or isn’t the post office a corporation owned by all 50 states (federal). Therefore is it, or is it not a public property? Either the attorney on the case was a idiot, or the Post Office isn’t owned by the U.S. government anymore, owned by a private entity, and they don’t want the public to know???
Hello, I’m also a petition signature gatherer. Although I’ve had many problems while petitioning at various post offices. I actually got arrested in Missouri for following their policy. I was arrested for carrying a sign and informing the public about an issue. I then directed the public to another petitioner who was standing on a public sidewalk to actually sign the petition. This policy was in accordance with postal regulations. I got arrested for refusing to leave. The charges were later dropped, but I am still pursuing the issue.
A particularly chilling aspect of this decision is that the District Court accepted at face value the assertion that petition-gathering is “intimidating and intrusive,” whereas the Constitution enshrines petition-gathering as a necessary good for democracy. The right to petition government for the redress of grievances is in the First Amendment. How intrusive or intimidating are friendly questions like, “Would you like to sign a petition?” Or “Would you like to support ____?” If merely speaking to someone in public may be construed as “intimidating and intrusive” what does this say about the relatively low value which the Court places on public speech anywhere? There is no balancing act between the great public good which the Constitution sees in the petition process and in free speech generally as against what at worst amounts to a momentary irritation. My experience gathering signatures outside of a Post Office–not for pay–suggest that the bulk of the public welcomes such a public dialogue. One in a hundred might object to being greeted in a friendly manner. Does their out-sized irritability countenance constraining the speech of the other 99?
The Court, clearly and wrongly, sees its objections to petition-gathering as affecting only the petition-gatherers and not the signers. In the age of the automobile and the low-density suburb, the Court shows a lamentable disregard for the death of the public square. People do not shop Main Street anymore. Shopping centers, malls and even many workplaces, have sufficiently large parking lots to effectively isolate citizens from the public sidewalks. Petitioners typically are banned from access to those spots where citizens are most likely to traffic–and if permitted access at all–confined to relatively untrafficked areas.
The Post Office and City Hall, for all intents and purposes, are the remains of America’s once vigorous public square. The Court’s willingness to shred this last vestige of unimpeded access shows a willingness to privilege the moneyed corporate interests–which can campaign effectively through advertising, workplace PACs and direct-mail–over the interests of the individual citizen’s shoe-leather lobby. It says that the powerful may retain access to all the powerful levers of modern opinion-making and public relations, while the individual petition-gatherer is relegated to the anonymity of an empty field and a megaphone. Should he or she become effective, no doubt the megaphone would be stripped away!