Oklahoma City curbs panhandling restrictions
What does this mean for pending lawsuit?
Staff Writer | wcrum@oklahoman.com
Tuesday’s vote by the Oklahoma City Council to roll back restrictions on panhandlers appeared insufficient to settle a federal lawsuit over the city’s anti-panhandling ordinance.
Mayor Mick Cornett told the council Tuesday morning that the city had an offer to settle the lawsuit, and council members discussed it for
about 15 minutes behind closed doors.
The council then returned from executive session and unanimously voted to amend the panhandling ordinance, relaxing prohibitions on panhandlers in street medians near busy intersections.
The vote, though, appeared unlikely to end the litigation.
“I can say that the crux of any resolution agreeable to our clients is the repeal of the anti-panhandling ordinance, rather than merely amending it,” said Brady Henderson, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma.
The council voted in December 2015 to crack down on panhandling, an effort spearheaded by Ward 6 Councilwoman Meg Salyer, who made the issue a priority in her 2015 re-election campaign.
The ACLU of Oklahoma sued in April 2016, contending the new ordinance would make criminals out of poverty-stricken residents just trying to get by.
An attorney for the city, Rick Smith, declined on Tuesday to release the settlement offer.
Henderson also declined to release details, writing in an email that “settlement offers and discussions have to be kept confidential.”
In amending the panhandling ordinance, the council adopted an emergency clause, meaning
the new language will take effect within days, as soon as the ordinance is published.
The December 2015 ordinance outlawed anyone from “sitting, standing or staying” within 200 feet of an intersection in traffic medians less than 30 feet wide.
It was promoted as necessary for public safety.
The ordinance had the effect of pushing panhandling off the median at busy intersections. Those spots are favored by panhandlers, who can easily seek handouts from drivers waiting to turn left.
Safety rationale
The amended ordinance drops restrictions based on median width and proximity to intersections, instead limiting access where the speed limit for passing traffic is 40 miles per hour or greater.
That effectively
reopens 103 medians — by the city’s count — to panhandlers.
The list includes busy spots such as the intersection of NW 23 Street and Pennsylvania Avenue that had been the focus of complaints about panhandling.
Maintaining its safety rationale, the council adopted findings that individuals place themselves “in grave danger of grievous bodily injuries or death” when passing traffic reaches higher speeds.
In its lawsuit, the ACLU asserted the previous ordinance limited otherwise lawful activities by political activists, runners and joggers, and journalists.
Street paper vendors said the measure would limit their sales.
In a statement issued Tuesday afternoon, Henderson said the amended ordinance did “nothing to make the city code constitutional.”
Effect on safety
“From the beginning, this ordinance has been
about limiting the First Amendment rights of Oklahoma City’s indigent population and sweeping visible evidence of poverty under the rug,” he said.
“Today’s amendment makes the public no safer,” Henderson said. “Instead it only serves to drag already costly litigation out further.”
“If the city council is truly interested in protecting the residents they ostensibly serve, they cannot continue to punish the poor under the guise of protecting public safety,” he said.
The city hired outside counsel to assist in defending the anti-panhandling ordinance.
Amanda Carpenter of the city attorney’s office said Tuesday that the litigation was “ongoing.”
The next major deadline in the case is Jan. 1, when the two sides are supposed to have shared pertinent facts in a legal process called discovery.