Day laborers have 1st Amendment right to solicit jobs

NEW YORK (AP) — Day laborers in a Long Island town have a First Amendment right to solicit passing truck drivers for jobs, a divided federal appeals court said Tuesday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan by a 2-to1 vote on Tuesday struck down the 2009 law that banned the solicitation in Oyster Bay, saying it was content-driven and aimed at stopping workers from reaching out to motorists on a fourblock section of the suburban New York town's roads.

Circuit Judge Barrington D. Parker, writing for the majority, said the ordinance was a restriction on commercial speech in a town with a population of roughly 300,000 people.

It was passed after residents complained that day laborers were causing dangerous, congestive, unhygienic and unsightly conditions. Town lawyers said it was necessary to fix traffic and safety issues that arose when trucks stopped to pick up workers. The law banned efforts to stop a vehicle "only if a suspect says the wrong thing, for example, 'hire me' as opposed to 'tell me the time,'" Parker wrote. "This is content-based restriction and it is well settled that such restrictions implicate the First Amendment."

The law, challenged by two entities that try to advance the interests of day laborers in the town, had not been enforced as the courts considered its legality.