Bill to regulate news racks heads toward showdown

Jace Radke

Tuesday, Oct. 6, 1998 | 11:17 a.m.

The city of Las Vegas and the American Civil Liberties Union have two weeks to try to amend a bill that would regulate news racks, but if an accommodation cannot be reached the bill will go before the City Council as written on Oct. 26.

City Councilman Michael McDonald gave the bill a thumbs-up at Monday's recommendation meeting, but ACLU executive director Gary Peck raised questions as to the constitutionality of how the bill allocates news racks to Las Vegas publications.

"We are very uncomfortable with the ordinance because it is severely and fundamentally flawed," Peck said. "The bill favors some publications over others, and government has no business doing that."

The purpose of the bill is to keep people from setting up makeshift or stolen news racks to circumvent city regulations and business licenses, McDonald said.

The bill calls for publications to be separated into three groups based on the publishing frequency and circulation of the publication. Group A is for daily publications that distribute more than 100,000 copies a week. Group B is for weekly publications with more than 5,000 copies a week and group C is for all other publications.

The bill also calls for each rack to have an identification number and for every entity that operates a news rack to keep a public liability insurance policy.

Peck and ACLU cooperating attorney Allen Lichtenstein said they were concerned that there would not be enough racks for group C publications and that small publishers would be unable to afford the insurance.

"The ACLU is not against the bill's purpose of limiting news racks to an acceptable amount, but we want to make sure that some publications aren't favored over others," Lichtenstein said.

McDonald said that he wants the ACLU and the city to meet to see whether the ACLU's questions can be addressed in the bill.

"I want to see if we can amend the bill so that it's palatable for everyone," McDonald said. "Being a police officer, the First Amendment is one of the sacred things that I hold to my heart. This bill has been around for two months because we have tried to hear from the experts on this subject."

If the city and the ACLU cannot come to a compromise, the bill will go to the City Council in its current form.

"If we exhaust all the arguments and can't make any amendments, then we'll still have to move forward with this bill," McDonald said.

If that happens, Peck said he is confident the bill would not hold up in court.

"We'd like to see the city come up with an ordinance that is constitutional and does not invite challenges," Peck said. "If this bill moves forward it is quite plain that publications will be affected on the basis of their content, and that is unconstitutional."