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Soliciting a Line Between Safety And Protected Speech

P. Kenneth Burns / WYPR

A Baltimore City Council committee will take up Tuesday a bill that has been hanging around since January. 

It would ban panhandlers and others looking for money from approaching cars on city streets.

Councilwoman Rikki Spector, the bill’s sponsor, says it’s a safety issue. People walking through large amounts of traffic seeking donations—whether they’re homeless beggars or collecting for a charity--creates a potentially dangerous scenario.

“You see how dangerous it is now with the interaction of so many bicycles in traffic.  This is even more dangerous; this is a pedestrian,” says Spector.

The council’s Judiciary and Legislative Investigations Committee adjourned two earlier hearings on the bill to allow for further study on its constitutionality. City lawyers pointed to a case involving a similar law in Charlottesville, Va.  In that case, a group of homeless men argued that the law violated their right to beg, a form of protected speech.

A federal district court dismissed the suit, but an appeals court ruled that the lower court acted rashly and sent the case back for further consideration. Baltimore City lawyers have suggested an amendment that spells out the council’s public safety concerns.

Spector says her bill doesn’t prevent pan handling in general, just in traffic, adding there are other, safer places to ask for money. She says there is plenty of “open public space where you can interact with pedestrians; that wouldn’t be a dangerous thing.”

Despite that, opponents say they worry about the effect of the law on people who beg to survive.

“What we don’t think is particularly effective is criminalizing behaviors that are a direct result of people’s poverty,” says Adam Schneider, director of community relations for Health Care for the Homeless, who testified against the bill at a hearing in April.  Schneider says throwing people in jail because they cannot pay a $100 fine is counterproductive; making an already difficult situation for struggling people, even worse.

“For the amount of money that we spend to put somebody in jail for a week, we can probably put them in an apartment for a month,” Schneider says.