In 2000, the Initiative & Referendum Institute filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Postal Service against a regulation passed that year that makes it illegal for petitioning to occur on post office sidewalks. The part of the case involving interior postal sidewalks is still in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. Recently, the judge in the case asked the postal service to send a survey to all postmasters, asking to what extent people have used interior postal sidewalks for First Amendment activity, including petitioning. The results should be known in a month. “Interior sidewalks” means sidewalks that lead from the street to the post office, or to its parking lot, or between the parking lot and the post office itself.
It is a real disgrace that most Post Offices have been declared “off limits” for people collecting signatures on petitions. This has made ballot access a lot more difficult than it would be otherwise.
Ironically, if the survey shows that there is lots of First Amendment activity on these sidewalks, that is good for the lawsuit. The more activity there has been, the more likely it is that p.o. sidewalks are a “traditional public forum.” So all you petitioners out there who have been using those sidewalks, that helps!
“Richard Says:
August 30th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Ironically, if the survey shows that there is lots of First Amendment activity on these sidewalks, that is good for the lawsuit. The more activity there has been, the more likely it is that p.o. sidewalks are a ‘traditional public forum.’ So all you petitioners out there who have been using those sidewalks, that helps!”
Lots of petitioners try to use those sidewalks, but the only problem is that they usually end up getting threatened with arrest and kicked out.
I’ve seen other groups in front of Post Offices from time to time, such as people collecting donations for vetrans and stuff like that, but I don’t know if they ever get kicked out or not.
There is no legitimate reason why people should not be able to petition in front of any Post Office in the country, and I would include Post Offices that are inside stores/shopping centers.
If our side could win this case it would be a major victory for petition rights and 1st amendment rights in general.
Why would the U.S. Postal Service be against free speech? It is most ass-backwards for local federal officials to run off petitioners, especially those from government-regulated political organizations! This court case will say a lot about the state of democracy of these United States of America.
“Why would the U.S. Postal Service be against free speech?”
Because they are a government operation and we have a corrupt government that doesn’t give a damn about their own Constitution.
Last year I collected petition signatures in front of this one Post Office that was on a city sidewalk (note that it has already been declared legal to petition in front of Post Offices that are on city sidewalks and directly parallel to public streets) and I had some Postal employees walk by me and make nasty comments. One of them came up to me and said, “You are on federal property! You aren’t supposed to be here!” My response was, “We the people own the federal government.” I had another one come up to me and tell me not to move off of the sidewalk that was parallel to the street and that if I did they would call the police on me. It was pretty obvious that they were hostile towards people collecting petition signatures on this city sidewalk that was in front of a Post Office, but in this case they knew that there was nothing that they could do about it because the courts had already declared that this was a legal activity.
Unfortunately, most Post Offices these days do not have entrances that are directly off of city sidewalks that are parallel to public streets, so therefore people who collect petition signatures can and do get kicked out of most other Post Offices.
Erstwhile petitioners would do well to remind their local postmasters that they have indeed tried to petition and have been asked to leave. The average bureaucrat will heel like a dog when the boss says so. They would also do well to FOIL the post offices in general to see if they have in fact answered the survey. It seems like those on the ballot are never challenged when campaigning in these areas. Our campaign had numerous hours in 2006 wasted when asked to leave from planned spot. Rural PO’s tend not have streets adjacent to them. They are some of the best places to consistently collect signatures, even over the course of a few days.
Hopefully one of these days someone will open the eyes of judges that they are actually violating 1st amendment right of free speech by not letting petitioners gather signatures on U.S. Postal Propery. 1st of all.. is the U.S. Postal property owned by the U.S. government, or not. If not, then they should place a notice of this on their doors, and recieve no public funding. The Post office argument is that they are self sufficient, but I say SO WHAT! That doesn’t retract from the fact that it is owned by We the people, which basically falls under the classification of public. It seems that the U.S. Post Office claims to be private when it best suits them, and public when they want public assistance.
Mr. Winger, is this still in court, or has there been a decision reached now?
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