Both sides have agreed on a briefing schedule in Initiative & Referendum Institute v U.S. Postal Service, which has been pending in U.S. District Court for many years. All briefs will be in by May 16, and oral argument will be heard soon afterwards. The case is in the District of Columbia.
The issue is whether the Postal Service may constitutionally ban petitioning from interior post office sidewalks. The Postal Service already lost the part of this case dealing with Postal sidewalks that are parallel to streets.
If this decision comes done in favor of the petitioners this will be a HUGE victory for our side.
In some places in this country it is very difficult to find places to gather petition signatures, and sometimes the Post Office is a good potential place to get them but the problem is that most Post Offices are not directly off of city sidewalks, therefore, under the current guildlines they are officially “off limits” for petition circulators.
A few months ago I was gathering petition signatures in front of a Post Office which was not directly off of a city sidewalk (I was in an area where I had difficulty finding locations) and after about 20-30 minutes I was spotted by a Postal employee who threatened to have me arrested if I didn’t leave. After informing this Postal employee that his actions were in violation of the 1st amendment to the Constitution and were subverting the election process by trying to keep a candidate off of the ballot, thus potentially robbing the voters of a choice, I decided to leave before the cops got there because I knew that under the current status of the Post Office petitioning case that there was no chance that the police would back me up.
I know that there are petitioners who have actually been arrested at Post Offices around the country.
This tyrannical policy from the Post Office needs to END. ALL Post Offices – including those in shopping centers & stores – should be open access for petition circulators.
FREEDOM MUST RULE ON THIS GREAT FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUE.