Begging ban’s lawsuit halted during appeal

Both sides requested stay during appeal of injunction

U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson on Monday granted a joint request to temporarily halt proceedings in an ongoing lawsuit challenging the state’s new begging ban.

On Sept. 27, Wilson issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the state from enforcing a recently revised section of a state law. He said that, like an earlier version of the law that he declared unconstitutional last year, the new version still violates the U.S. Constitution by prohibiting a specific type of speech — in this case, begging.

The law in question is Section (a)(3) of Arkansas Code Annotated 5-71-213, which makes it illegal to linger in public or on private property “for the purpose of asking for anything as a charity or gift: (a) in a harassing or threatening manner, (b) in a way likely to cause alarm to the other person, or (c) under circumstances that create a traffic hazard or impediment.”

Before state legislators rewrote the law earlier this year, it made it illegal for anyone to “linger or remain in a public place or on the premises of another for the purpose of begging.”

Wilson sided with two panhandlers who filed a constitutional challenge to both forms of the law through the Arkansas Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, finding that both versions “restrict only a certain species of speech (asking for gifts or charity).”

By applying only to beggars and not to other people who linger, such as those stumping for political candidates, soliciting business customers or promoting religious beliefs, the section “is a content-based restriction of constitutionally protected speech,” Wilson said.

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said she respectfully disagreed with the ruling, and her office immediately appealed the preliminary ruling to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, instead of waiting to see if Wilson would turn the preliminary injunction into a permanent injunction after both sides present additional evidence at a trial.

Last week, just after the appeal was filed, attorneys for the ACLU and the state filed a joint motion asking Wilson to stay the proceedings in his court until the 8th Circuit

rules. They pointed out that the appellate court’s resolution of the case will address legal issues that may make a trial unnecessary, streamline the issues for trial and provide important guidance on how to adjudicate the case. They argued that a stay would thus “promote judicial efficiency and conserve the time of both the parties and the Court.”

In granting the request Monday, Wilson directed the parties to file a motion to lift the stay once the appeal is resolved.