Ban against pickets at homes considered

Jeffrey Libby

Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2002 | 9:36 a.m.

Protesters in Henderson would be prohibited from picketing an individual home under an ordinance being considered for a vote tonight by the Henderson City Council.

The proposed language closely tracks a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision that limited free speech to protect a doctor from protests outside his home by anti-abortion pickets, said Allen Lichtenstein, a Las Vegas attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.

"The way the Supreme Court has ruled is, they cannot ban picketing in residential areas. But they can ban the targeted picketing of individual homes," Lichtenstein said.

The proposed ordinance says just that: "Picketing of dwellings prohibited. No person shall engage in picketing the dwelling of any individual in the city of Henderson."

In an e-mail, Ron Sailon, Henderson assistant city attorney, said the ordinance "disallows picketing within a residential neighborhood."

"It is not possible to go into a neighborhood and picket and affect only one neighbor. In fact, many neighbors are affected," he said.

Councilman Jack Clark has not endorsed the ordinance, but said, "It's one thing if you picket City Hall, but how about if you have an 8-year-old and 20 guys are outside your house screaming and yelling? There's a real potential for violence.

"Unfortunately, it falls on the legislative body to pass rules that dictate what all of us should already know. You shouldn't have the right to go to somebody's house and do that," Clark said.

Few Henderson homes have been picketed, Sailon said, but the ordinance would "provide the city with laws to prohibit such activity and protect neighbors and neighborhoods from the intrusion into their privacy."

In 1988, in Frisby v. Schultz, the Supreme Court ruled that the town of Brookfield, Wis., was within its constitutional rights when it banned picketing in front of individual residences.

Although streets are considered public forums, the Court said, municipal governments have a "legitimate interest in protecting an unwilling listener while in their house."

Councilwoman Amanda Cyphers said, "We're all pretty much in a fishbowl. I've got my Palm Pilot, I carry a cellphone. People can reach me pretty much 24/7. But when it comes to our homes, our homes are our sanctuary."

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld as free speech the right to hand out pamphlets on the Las Vegas Strip on sidewalks privately owned by casinos. But handing out literature to passersby in a public place is entirely different than "attempting to harass someone in their house," Lichtenstein said.

The proposed Henderson ordinance, in its close tracking of the 1988 Supreme Court ruling, would not curtail general picketing in a residential neighborhood or parades through streets, Lichtenstein said.