Gaudiya Vaishnava Society,
a California religious non-profit
corporation,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
City and County of San Francisco,
Defendant-Appellant.
No. 88-1904
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE
NINTH CIRCUIT
952 F.2d 1059; 1991 U.S. App. LEXIS
29823; 92 Cal. Daily Op.
Service 228; 91 Daily Journal DAR 16005
March 16, 1989, Argued and Submitted, San
Francisco, California
December 26, 1991, Filed
PRIOR HISTORY: [**1] Appeal from
the United States District Court for the Northern District
of California. D.C. No. CV-86-4227-WWS. William W.
Schwarzer, District Judge, Presiding.
952 F.2d 1059, *; 1991 U.S. App. LEXIS
29823, **1; 92 Cal. Daily Op. Service 228; 91 Daily Journal
DAR 16005
Original Opinion Reported at 1990 U.S. App. LEXIS
5185.
CORE TERMS: merchandise, message,
nonprofit, ordinance, religious, first amendment,
charitable, protected speech, solicitation, inextricably
intertwined, philosophical, regulation, ideological,
expressive, peddler, commercial speech, permanent
injunction, intertwined, selling, intrinsic value, carrying,
buttons, presentations, fish, constituting, discriminate,
conveyed, pure, unbridled discretion, noncommercial.
COUNSEL: Burk E. Delventhal, Deputy City
Attorney, San Francisco, California, for
thedefendant-appellant. Robert C. Moest, Fleishman, Fisher
& Moest, Los Angeles, California, for the
plaintiff-appellee.
JUDGES: Before: Melvin Brunetti and John
T. Noonan, Jr., Circuit Judges, and Harry L. Hupp, *
District Judge.
*Honorable Harry L. Hupp, United States
District Judge for the Central District of California,
sitting by designation.
Opinion by Judge Brunetti.
OPINIONBY: BRUNETTI
OPINION: [*1060] ORDER AND
AMENDED OPINION ORDER
The opinion filed on April 10, 1990 is
amended as follows:
At Slip Opinion page 3563, insert the following at the end
of Section I:
Under Lakewood, "a facial challenge lies whenever a
licensing law gives a government official or agency
substantial power to discriminate based on the content or
viewpoint of speech by suppressing disfavored speech or
disliked speakers
The law must have a close enough
nexus to expression, or to conduct commonly associated
[**2] with expression, to pose a real and
substantial threat of the identified censorship risks." 486
U.S. at 759.
Here, the unguided discretion provided by
the peddling-permit scheme grants the police chief complete
power to allow or prohibit charitable sales solicitation for
any reason, including the message conveyed by the sales
pitch or by the goods themselves. Since the solicitations at
issue here are protected expression, see infra, the scheme
grants power to the chief of police to discriminate based on
the content of protected expression.
The regulation also has a close enough
nexus to expression to pose a real threat of censorship.
Section 660.2(j) regulates conduct which is itself protected
speech - charitable sales solicitation. The chief of police
can use discretion to shut off plaintiffs' speech. This
situation is different from one in which a law with no close
connection to expression provides an official with
discretion that might be used to reward or punish speech.
See Lakewood, 486 U.S. at 761.
At page 3566, insert the following
footnote to replace footnote number 5:
5. The City also contends that the only
political, religious, [**3] philosophical or
ideological message conveyed during the sales of merchandise
by the nonprofits is a small, innocuous, camouflaged or
removable message on the merchandise itself. We do not
address the case of sales of merchandise not inextricably
intertwined with first amendment speech. That situation,
which was not presented by the facts in this case, would
presumably fall under the rule of Board of Trustees of the
State University of New York v. Fox, 492 U.S. 469 (1989). If
the speech element was purely commercial, a political or
religious message not intertwined with that commercial
message would be insufficient to transform the whole into
protected speech.
This facial, systemic challenge does not
require us to determine at what point the commercial element
of a sale of any type of merchandise would so overwhelm the
noncommercial element with which it is intertwined.
At page 3566, insert the following at the
end of Section II:
The City has consistently argued that the ordinance is valid
as a law of general application regulating conduct that may
have an incidental effect on speech, citing United States v.
O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968). [**4]
We note here for purposes of clarity only
that the four-part balancing test first enunciated in
O'Brien does not apply to this case. O'Brien held that the
government's interest in prohibiting the act of draft card
destruction could justify an "incidental limitation[
] on First Amendment freedoms." Id. at 376.
We are not concerned here with expressive
conduct regarding symbolic items, as was the Court in both
O'Brien and, more recently, Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397,
402-06 (1989). This case, rather, is one that requires us to
examine whether the commercial and pure elements of speech
are inextricably intertwined, as in Riley v. National
Federation of the Blind of North Carolina, Inc., 487 U.S.
781 (1988), and Board of Trustees of the State University of
New York v. Fox, 492 U.S. 469 (1989). Therefore, we reject
the City's contention that under O'Brien, the ordinance was
valid.
Even if one did apply the four tests of
O'Brien, the ordinance would not pass muster. The ordinance
does pass three of the tests. It is within the
constitutional power of the city. It protects important
governmental [**5] interests in avoiding clutter and
promoting the aesthetic appearance of the city. These
interests are not related to communication. But the fourth
test means that "the neutral regulation promotes a
substantial government interest that would be achieved less
effectively absent the regulation." United States v.
Albertini, 472 U.S. 675, 689 (1985); or, in other words, the
regulation must not "burden substantially more speech than
is necessary to further the government's legitimate
interests." Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 799
(1989). In the present case rules that give guidance to the
chief of police would be compatible with the city's
interests. No need for unbridled discretion in the chief
exists. The ordinance fails to meet the standards set by
O'Brien.
With these amendments, the panel has
voted to deny the petition for rehearing.
Circuit Judges Brunetti and Noonan have
voted to reject the suggestion for rehearing en banc.
District Judge Hupp has voted to recommend the rejection of
the suggestion for rehearing en banc.
The full court has been advised of the
suggestion for rehearing en banc, and no judge of the court
has requested [**6] a vote on the suggestion for
rehearing en banc. Fed. R. App. P. 35(b).
The petition for rehearing is denied and
the suggestion for rehearing en banc is rejected.
OPINION BRUNETTI, Circuit Judge:
This action challenges the constitutionality of an ordinance
which regulates the sale of merchandise on public sidewalks
by nonprofit groups. The district court concluded that the
ordinance violated the nonprofits' First Amendment rights
and enjoined its enforcement insofar as it prohibits the
sale by nonprofit organizations of merchandise constituting
or making a statement carrying a political, religious,
philosophical or ideological message. We affirm.
BACKGROUND
The appellees are five nonprofit organizations engaged in a
variety of charitable, religious and political activities in
the San Francisco area. All five of the nonprofit groups
have over the past several years sold various
message-bearing ("expressive") merchandise such as T-shirts,
books, buttons, stuffed animals, jewelry and bumper
stickers. The district court in its findings described each
organization: Gaudiya Vaishnava Society, a religious
organization, performs sankirtan, a public ritual intended
to disseminate the [**7] teachings of and win
coverts to Gaudiya Vaishnavism. In the course of sankirtan,
members collect alms and offer clothing for sale, some of
which bear messages related to the organization's religious
beliefs. Greenpeace Pacific-Southwest, Inc., is a nonprofit
political group which advocates numerous environmental
causes. As part of its activities, Greenpeace sets up tables
in the City of San Francisco to bring its message to the
general public and solicit financial contributions and
membership. At these tables Greenpeace sells a wide variety
of merchandise, including message-bearing T-shirts. All of
its merchandise is intended to transmit messages, verbally
or symbolically, about he causes Greenpeace espouses. San
Francisco Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign is an
unincorporated political organization that advocates
"freezing" and reversing the production of nuclear arms. The
organization is engaged in a campaign to inform the public
about its beliefs. The group communicates its message and
solicits money by setting up tables in San Francisco to
distribute literature, solicit signatures on petitions, and
sell buttons, postcards, bumper stickers and T-shirts. San
Francisco CISPES is the [**8] San Francisco chapter
of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El
Salvador. The Organization is opposed to the United States
foreign policy regarding El Salvador and other Central
America countries. To raise funds and disseminate its
message, CISPES operates street corner tables, soliciting
donations and offering for sale flyers, buttons,
message-bearing T-shirts and literature. San Francisco
Lesbian-Gay Freedom Day Parade and Celebration Committee,
Inc. is a nonprofit educational organization which organizes
civil rights events. The organization raises its operating
budget by selling message-bearing buttons and
T-shirts.
The nonprofits challenged San Francisco
Police Code @ 660.2(i) which prohibited nonprofit
organizations from selling in the [*1061]
Fisherman's Wharf or Union Square areas of San Francisco
without a commercial peddler's permit, any merchandise other
than books, pamphlets, buttons, bumperstickers, posters, or
items that have no intrinsic value other than to communicate
a message. n1 As originally enacted, the ordinance required
nonprofits to register with the police department and make
certain disclosures to the public regarding Their
purposes.
Footnotes:
n1 Peddler permits under S.F. Cal. Police Code @@ 869-869.18
are granted, denied and revoked at the discretion of the
police department. Permits are only issued to natural
persons, not organizations and are nontransferable.
Applicants are charged a $ 300 nonrefundable application fee
and an annual permit tax. The district made findings that
few if any of these permits were
available.
[**9] After the adoption of
the ordinance, tourists, merchants and other citizens
complained about the inadequate regulation of sales by
charitable organizations.
n2 Because of overhead costs
associated with maintaining a storefront, the local
merchants complained that the nonprofits are able to
discount the price of similar merchandise like T-shirts by
as much as 33%.
On 22 July 1986, one of the nonprofits, appellee Gaudiya
Vaishnava Society ("GVS") instituted an action for
injunctive and declaratory relief, and applied for a
temporary restraining order. The other four named plaintiffs
joined suit on 4 August 1986 when GVS filed an amended
complaint.
The district court awarded the
[**10] plaintiffs a preliminary injunction on 15
August 1986. The court informed the parties that it intended
to issue an order enjoining @ 660.2(i) only as it applied to
the sale of "merchandise constituting or making a statement
carrying a religious, political, philosophical or
ideological message relevant to the purpose of the
organization." The City objected as it did not want its
police officers to have to determine which merchandise met
this test. The court therefore enjoined the City from
enforcing the entire ordinance.
Two months later, at the motion of the
City, the court modified the injunction to reflect the
initial proposed order. n3
Footnotes:
n3 The October 10, 1986, district court order states that:
1. The sale by an organization, or its members or
representatives, of books and pamphlets as well as articles
of clothing and other merchandise constituting or making a
statement carrying a religious, political, philosophical or
ideological message relevant to the purpose of the
organization ('expressive item') is an activity protected by
the First Amendment.
4. The peddlers' permit provision, @ 660.2(i), does not
offer a constitutionally adequate alternative to plaintiffs
because the Police Code makes the issuance of permits
discretionary, subjects them to being revoked on
discretionary grounds, denies them to plaintiffs as
charitable organizations, imposes an excessive application
fee and annual tax, and makes few, if any, permits presently
available to anyone.
Therefore, defendant, is enjoined from
enforcing the prohibition against 'sales solicitations for
charitable purposes,' [in Fisherman's Wharf area],
against any charitable organization or person acting for it
with respect to the sale or distribution of expressive items
as defined in paragraph 1 of this order.
Before the permanent injunction proceedings came before the
district court, the City recodified @ 660.2(i) as @ 660.2(j)
and amended it to its present form, excluding from the
peddler permit requirement, the sale of merchandise which
had no intrinsic purpose or value other than to communicate
a message. n4 The parties agreed that [*1062] the
original preliminary injunction would apply to @ 660.2(j).
This amendment narrowed the issue before the district court
to whether the City could regulate the sale of merchandise,
such as T-shirts, stuffed animals or jewelry, constituting
or making a statement carrying a message expressing the
beliefs of a nonprofit organization.
Footnotes:
n4 Section 660.2(j) of the San Francisco Municipal Code
(Police Code @ 660 Et. seq.) currently provides: No person
may engage in sales solicitations for charitable purposes by
means of selling clothing, jewelry, or any other goods,
products, services or merchandise in any area of the City
and County of San Francisco unless that person obtains the
appropriate peddling permit pursuant to Articles 13, 17.3 or
24 of the San Francisco Police Code. This Section shall not
apply to the sale of books, pamphlets, buttons,
bumperstickers, posters or any other type of item that has
no intrinsic value or purpose other than to communicate a
message." (Emphasis added.)
On 21 March 1988 the district court issued its Findings of
Fact and Conclusions of Law and its judgment granting
plaintiffs a permanent injunction. The district court found
that the sale of expressive items was protected by the First
Amendment, and held that the City's commercial peddler's
permit system was unconstitutional as it made issuance and
revocation of permits discretionary, denied permits to
charitable organizations, imposed an excessive application
fee and annual tax, and made few if any permits available to
anyone. This appeal by the City followed.
ANALYSIS
I. The district court's jurisdiction over the underlying
litigation of this appeal is based on 28 U.S.C. @@ 1331 and
1343(3). We have jurisdiction over an appeal from an order
issuing a permanent injunction under 28 U.S.C. @
1291.
Our review of an order granting a motion
for a permanent injunction is limited to determining whether
the district court abused its discretion in issuing the
order, based on erroneous legal standards, or clearly
erroneous findings of fact. S.E.C. v. Goldfield Deep Mines
Co. of Nevada, 758 F.2d 459, 465 (9th Cir. 1985). However,
we also review the permanent injunction [**13] for
constitutional infirmity. Because this involves the
application of undisputed facts to constitutional law, this
review is done de novo. Portland Feminist Women's Health
Center v. Advocates for Life, Inc., 859 F.2d 681, 684 (9th
Cir. 1988), citing Jews for Jesus, Inc. v. Board of Airport
Commissioners of City of Los Angeles, 785 F.2d 791, 792 (9th
Cir. 1986), aff'd by 482 U.S. 569, 107 S. Ct. 2568, 96 L.
Ed. 2d 500 (1987). We conduct an independent review of the
record to be sure that "the speech in question actually
falls within the protected category", and to determine
whether the constitutional factors have properly been
applied. Playtime Theaters, Inc. v. City of Renton, 748 F.2d
527 (9th Cir. 1984), rev'd on other grounds, 475 U.S. 41
(1986).
Because this case involves a licensing
ordinance which allegedly vests unbridled discretion in a
government official over whether to deny or permit
expressive activity, the nonprofits may challenge it
facially without the necessity of first applying for, and
being denied, a permit. See City of Lakewood v. Plain Dealer
Publishing Co., 108 S. Ct. 2138, 2143 (1988).
[**14]
Under Lakewood, "a facial challenge lies
whenever a licensing law gives a government official or
agency substantial power to discriminate based on the
content or viewpoint of speech by suppressing disfavored
speech or disliked speakers
The law must have a close
enough nexus to expression, or to conduct commonly
associated with expression, to pose a real and substantial
threat of the identified censorship risks." 486 U.S. at
759.
Here, the unguided discretion provided by
the peddling-permit scheme grants the police chief complete
power to allow or prohibit charitable sales solicitation for
any reason, including the message conveyed by the sales
pitch or by the goods themselves. Since the solicitations at
issue here are protected expression, see infra, the scheme
grants power to the chief of police to discriminate based on
the content of protected expression.
The regulation also has a close enough
nexus to expression to pose a real threat of censorship.
Section 660.2(j) regulates conduct which is itself protected
speech - charitable sales solicitation. The chief of police
can use discretion to shut off plaintiffs' speech. This
situation is different [**15] from one in which a
law with no close connection to expression provides an
official with discretion that might be used to reward or
[*1063] punish speech. See Lakewood, 486 U.S. at
761.
II. First Amendment Protection
The first question we are called upon to answer is whether
the sale of merchandise which carries or constitutes a
political, religious, philosophical or ideological message
falls under the protection of the First Amendment. This
question is one of first impression for the courts of
appeals.
The City argues that the sale of
merchandise is nothing more than a commercial transaction
and therefore is afforded no constitutional protection. In
order to reach its conclusion the City has adopted a test it
calls the "purely communicative value test." Under this test
the City reasons that an expressive item sold by a nonprofit
organization is protected only when it has no intrinsic
value other than its message. Because items such as
T-shirts, jewelry, and stuffed animals have intrinsic value
beyond the messages they convey, the City argues that the
sale of such items constitutes a commercial transaction and
is not constitutionally protected.
The City cites [**16] little
support for its adoption of the "purely communicative value"
test. Because no case law draws this intrinsic value
distinction, the City cites cases which instead draw a
distinction between the sale of merchandise bearing a
group's message and the sale of merchandise bearing no
message. For instance, the City cites Muhammad Temple of
Islam-Shreveport v. City of Shreveport, La., 387 F. Supp.
1129 (W.D. La. 1979), aff'd by 517 F.2d 922 (5th Cir.
1975)(Muhammad-Temple), wherein the plaintiffs sold fish and
religious newspapers on public streets. The court held that
the City could regulate the sale of fish as it was a "purely
commercial activity." Muhammad-Temple, 387 F.Supp. at 1136.
However, the court held that the City could not interfere
with the plaintiffs' right to sell its religious newspaper
which was designed "to spread the word of their
religion."
Id. The court drew no distinction between
the intrinsic value of fish and newspapers but instead
relied on the fact that the newspaper conveyed the group's
message, while the fish did not.
The appellees do not argue this point,
and the lower court judgment does [**17] not allow
the nonprofits to sell merchandise bearing no message, such
as fish. The nonprofits contend that because the T-shirts
and other merchandise they sell convey core First Amendment
messages (political, religious and philosophical), their
activity should be afforded full protection under the First
Amendment.
The Supreme Court has held that
fund-raising for charitable organizations is fully protected
speech. Board of Trustees of the State Universit of New York
v. Fox, 109 S. Ct. 3028 (1989). Additionally, it has held
that an expressive item does not lose its constitutional
protections because it is sold rather than given away. City
of Lakewood, 108 S. Ct. at 2143 n.5; Heffron v.
International Society for Krishna Consciousness, 452 U.S.
640, 647 (1981); Village of Schaumburg v. Citizens for a
Better Environment, 444 U.S. 620, 633 (1980).
The Supreme Court has recognized that
drawing the line between "purely commercial ventures and
protected distribution of written materials [is] a
difficult task." Schaumburg, 444 U.S. at 630. In attempting
to distinguish between commercial speech [**18] and
fully protected speech, the Court in Schaumburg held that
when a transaction "does more than inform private economic
decisions and is not primarily concerned with providing
information about the characteristics and costs of goods and
services, it [is not treated as] a variety of purely
commercial speech." 444 U.S. at 632. Because charitable
solicitation is "characteristically intertwined with
informative and perhaps persuasive speech seeking support
for particular causes or for particular views on economic,
political or social issues" the Schaumburg court held it
must be treated [*1064] as a fully protected
activity under the First Amendment. Id.
Likewise, in Riley, the Supreme Court
held that "where
the component parts of a single
speech are inextricably intertwined we cannot parcel out the
speech, applying one test to one phrase and another test to
another phrase." Riley v. National Federation of the Blind
of North Carolina, Inc., 108 S. Ct. 2667, 2677 (1988). Riley
involved a state-law requirement that in conducting
fund-raising for charitable organizations the professional
fund-raisers must insert in their presentations
[**19] a statement setting forth the percentage of
contributions that are actually turned over to the
charitable organization. The court refused to separate the
component parts of charitable solicitations from the fully
protected whole and applied exacting
First Amendment scrutiny. Id.
The Court in Fox reaffirmed its holding
in Riley that the level of First Amendment scrutiny depends
upon the nature of the speech taken as a whole. 109 S. Ct.
at 3031. The court reviewed whether a state law which
prohibited AFS, Inc., a private commercial enterprise from
demonstrating and selling its houseware at a party hosted in
a student dormitory violated the First Amendment. Id. AFS,
Inc. argued that its presentations touched on other subjects
such as financial responsibility and how to run an efficient
home and that pure speech and commercial speech are
inextricably intertwined and therefore should be classified
as fully protected speech. The Supreme Court noted that
"there is nothing whatever inextricable about the
noncommercial aspect of these presentations" and that these
home economic elements no more converted AFS's presentations
into educational speech, than [**20] opening sales
presentations with a prayer or a Pledge of Allegiance would
convert them into religious or political speech
Communications can constitute commercial speech
notwithstanding the fact that they contain discussions of
important public issues. . . . Advertising which 'links a
product to a current debate' is not thereby entitled to the
constitutional protection afforded noncommercial
speech.
The street sale of merchandise such as a
T-shirt and stuffed animals involves "commercial
communication by the sales force." See Project 80's, Inc. v.
City of Pocatello, 876 F.2d 711, 714 (9th Cir. 1988) (youth
organization's door to door candy sales activities is
commercial speech). As the district court found, however,
Gaudiya Vaishnava Society, Greenpeace, CISPES, and San
Francisco Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign sell their
merchandise in conjunction with other activities in order to
disseminate their organizations' message. The nonprofit
groups inform individuals of their causes through
distributing their literature, engaging in persuasive
speech, and selling merchandise with messages affixed
[**21] to the product. This "informative and perhaps
persuasive speech seeking support for particular causes or
for particular views on economic, political, or social
issues," is fully protected speech. Schaumburg, 444 U.S. at
633. Where the pure speech and commercial speech by the
nonprofits during these activities is inextricably
intertwined, the entirety must be classified as
noncommercial and we must apply the test for fully protected
speech. Riley, 108 S. Ct. at 2677. n5 Accordingly, the
[*1065] district court correctly found that the San
Francisco Ordinance impermissibly regulates protected speech
in a public forum.
Footnotes:
n5 The City also contends that the only political,
religious, philosophical or ideological message conveyed
during the sales of merchandise by the nonprofits is a
small, innocuous, camouflaged or removable message on the
merchandise itself. We do not address the case of sales of
merchandise not inextricably intertwined with first
amendment speech. That situation, which was not presented by
the facts in this case, would presumably fall under the rule
of Board of Trustees of the State University of New York v.
Fox, 492 U.S. 469 (1989). If the speech element was purely
commercial, a political or religious message not intertwined
with that commercial message would be insufficient to
transform the whole into protected speech. This facial,
systemic challenge does not require us to determine at what
point the commercial element of a sale of any type of
merchandise would so overwhelm the noncommercial element
with which it is intertwined.
The City has consistently argued that the ordinance is valid
as a law of general application regulating conduct that may
have an incidental effect on speech, citing United States v.
O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968).
We note here for purposes of clarity only
that the four-part balancing test first enunciated in
O'Brien does not apply to this case. O'Brien held that the
government's interest in prohibiting the act of draft card
destruction could justify an "incidental limitation[
] on First Amendment freedoms." Id. at 376.
We are not concerned here with expressive
conduct regarding symbolic items, as was the Court in both
O'Brien and, more recently, Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397,
402-06 (1989). This case, rather, is one that requires us to
examine whether the commercial and pure elements of speech
are inextricably intertwined, as in Riley v. National
Federation of the Blind of North Carolina, Inc., 487 U.S.
781 (1988), and Board of Trustees of the State University of
New York v. Fox, 492 U.S. 469 (1989). Therefore, we reject
the City's contention that under O'Brien, the [**23]
ordinance was valid.
Even if one did apply the four tests of
O'Brien, the ordinance would not pass muster. The ordinance
does pass three of the tests. It is within the
constitutional power of the city. It protects important
governmental interests in avoiding clutter and promoting the
aesthetic appearance of the city. These interests are not
related to communication. But the fourth test means that
"the neutral regulation promotes a substantial government
interest that would be achieved less effectively absent the
regulation." United States v. Albertini, 472 U.S. 675, 689
(1985); or, in other words, the regulation must not "burden
substantially more speech than is necessary to further the
government's legitimate interests." Ward v. Rock Against
Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 799 (1989). In the present case rules
that give guidance to the chief of police would be
compatible with the city's interests. No need for unbridled
discretion in the chief exists. The ordinance fails to meet
the standards set by O'Brien.
III. The City's Permit System
The district court found that the city ordinance was
unconstitutional on its face because it permitted
[**24] the denial or revocation of a permit on the
basis of discretionary judgment by the Chief of Police. We
agree.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly
recognized public streets "as the archetype of a traditional
public forum." Frisby v. Schulz,108 S. Ct. 2495, 2499
(1988). In these traditional public fora, the government's
authority to restrict speech is at its minimum. Time, place
and manner restrictions are valid only if they are
content-neutral, narrowly tailored to serve a significant
government nterest, and retain ample alternative channels of
communication. Perry Education Ass'n v. Perry Local
Educators' Ass'n, 460 U.S. 37, 45 (1983). As an application
of the requirement that restrictions be narrowly tailored, a
law cannot condition the free exercise of First Amendment
rights on the "unbridled discretion" of government
officials. City of Lakewood, 108 S. Ct. at 2143.
In this case, nonprofits wishing to sell
merchandise that is inextricably intertwined with otherwise
fully protected speech are required to obtain a peddler's
permit pursuant to Articles 13, 17.3 or 24 of the San
Francisco Police Code. Section 869.7 of Article
[**25] 13 requires that an application for a
peddler's permit be submitted to the Chief of Police. Under
Section 869.2 "the Chief of Police may issue a permit
"
(Emphasis added). The ordinance provides no specific grounds
for granting or denying permits: no explicit [*1066]
limits are placed on the Chief of Police's discretion. An
almost identical permit system was struck down by the
Supreme Court in City of Lakewood, 108 S. Ct. at 2152. The
Court in City of Lakewood, held that it is unconstitutional
to grant an official "unfettered discretion to deny a permit
application." Id. "Such discretion grants officials the
power to discriminate and raises the spectre of selective
enforcement on the basis of the content of speech."
N.A.A.C.P., Western Region v. City of Richmond, 743 F.2d
1346, 1357 (9th Cir. 1984). Because the Chief of Police is
granted complete discretion in denying or granting such
permits, we hold that the City's ordinance is not saved from
constitutional infirmity by its commercial peddler's permit
system.
CONCLUSION
The district court permanently enjoined the City from
enforcing section 660.2(j) of the San Francisco Police
[**26] Code against plaintiffs or any nonprofit
organization or person acting for it, with respect to the
sale of merchandise constituting or making a statement
carrying a religious, political, philosophical or
ideological message relevant to the purpose of the
organization. We hold that when nonprofits engage in
activities where pure speech and commercial speech are
inextricably intertwined the entirety must be classified as
fully protected noncommercial speech. Accordingly, we modify
the permanent injunction to prohibit the City from enforcing
Section 660.2(j) of the San Francisco Police Code against
plaintiffs or any other nonprofit organization or person
acting for it, with respect to the sale of merchandise which
is inextricably intertwined with a statement carrying a
religious, political, philosophical or ideological
message.
AFFIRMED AS MODIFIED.
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