SANDY SPRINGS, Ga. — Sandy Springs is forging ahead on the creation of three ordinances that would change the way residents and visitors interact with one another inside city limits.
The regulations would restrict how people can canvas, protest and distribute materials, including newspapers, in Sandy Springs.
Some elected officials pushed back during a second discussion of the proposed ordinances at the Sandy Springs City Council’s March 18 work session.
The Sandy Springs Police and Legal departments recommended adoption of the three laws, which the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) researched and prepared for the city.
To open the discussion, Ryan Pelfrey, senior associate director of the ADL’s Southeast region, explained the background of the ordinance language.
“In recent years, ADL has witnessed an alarming surge in incidents of antisemitism and hate,” Pelfrey said.
“We decided to build out model ordinances that were broadly protective for everyone in the community,” he said. “They are content-neutral, and we decided to offer those as a resource for local governments looking to improve public safety.”
What the ordinances do
The first ordinance would restrict the overnight delivery of printed material to residences in the city.
Pelfrey says the ADL’s intention was to curb antisemitic fliers and other hateful mail that has been distributed around metro Atlanta, including Sandy Springs.
City Attorney Dan Lee expanded that goal.
“The [ordinance] is needed to affect the ever-recurring situation of hate mail, or just unwanted mail being distributed in a wholesale manner,” Lee wrote in a memo to the City Council.
“… we’ve had instances with different entities’ … distribution of literature not asked for by homeowners, left in driveways, causing trash to accumulate and blow down the street,” he said.
The law would prohibit that delivery between the hours of 9 p.m. and 7 a.m., with a fine between $25 and $100 per instance.
Lee said the second ordinance deals with individuals or crowds blocking public access to private property, including educational institutions, public facilities and places of worship.
“Presently, private property owners can decide who can be on their property and the police can arrest, for trespassing, anyone that doesn’t comply,” he wrote. “The current problem that this proposal would affect is prohibiting individuals or crowds from blocking the entrance to private property.”
In addition to prohibiting someone from blocking access to private property, the ordinance also forbids them from blocking access to public facilities and parking lots.
The third ordinance would create an 8-foot buffer, in which speakers or protestors would have to gain consent before addressing someone.
The restriction would apply to anyone within 50 feet of a school, place of worship or public path.
Lee writes that the law is intended to address, “situations where different persons, with potential conflicts, may have a right or opportunity to be on the same property, and the ownership of that property cannot determine whether one or the other can be uninvited.”
“This ordinance … establishes some boundaries for people who have the right to free speech, but at the same time don’t accost the folks who have a right to not be accosted by speech and delivery of items that they don’t want.”
‘The goal here is to balance everybody’s rights’
According to Lee, the proposed laws do not regulate the content of speech. He said the ordinances regulate where the exercise of First Amendment rights can occur, how law enforcement can address disorderly conduct and gives direction to the public on how to adhere.
City Councilwoman Jody Reichel asked if the proposed ordinances have been challenged in court in other jurisdictions.
Lee said Brookhaven is the only city in the state that has passed one of the ordinances, making the distribution of harassing material illegal between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m.
“So has it been challenged in court anywhere?” Reichel repeated, one of the Jewish members of the City Council. “I have lived in Sandy Springs for 30 years, and I’ve never received one piece of hate mail.”
Lee said the courts have upheld similar laws, citing the 2000 Supreme Court case Hill v. Colorado. The Court ruled that a Colorado law, requiring speakers to obtain consent before getting within 8 feet of someone near a health care facility, did not violate the right to free speech.
Reichel said she asked Police Chief Kenneth DeSimone what events brought the city to the point of passing the ordinances. She also said she wants to avoid legal challenges and another city lawsuit.
Mayor Paul cited antisemitic flyering incidents in Sandy Springs and crowds blocking synagogue driveways in Cobb County as reasons for the proposed ordinances.
“These are an effort to try and get ahead of any of that type of behavior that occurs here,” Paul said. “The goal here is to balance everybody’s rights …”
City Councilwoman Melody Kelley said she remains opposed to the second and third ordinance, citing outstanding issues from the January work session.
“What I would prefer to see come back to us for a public hearing is the overnight door-to-door soliciting and canvassing ordinance,” she said.
City Councilman John Paulson said he thinks the ordinances preventing people from blocking others from entering buildings, contain acceptable limits and will hopefully “chill” the behavior in the city.
City Councilman Andy Bauman said he has received unwanted literature on his vehicle, some of it hateful, while parked in commercial areas. He and other council members asked Lee why the city limited the restriction to private residences.
Bauman also asked hypothetically what would prevent Sandy Springs from extending the ordinance to all hours of the day.
In a clarifying question he said, “So, there’s safe harbor for the distribution of this hateful literature, or other literature, during daylight hours?”
“That’s right,” Lee answered.
Lee explained his response by saying that the city’s ability to enforce the ordinances is important.
He alleged that the majority of incidents happen at peoples’ homes and while they are asleep.
“Between the hours of 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. … is generally when the trouble canvassing and trouble solicitation would occur,” Lee said. “During the daylight hours, property owners can police themselves and the misuse of this kind of activity.”
During the exchange Bauman brought up the law’s impact on other, non-hateful materials.
He asks Lee: “So, somebody wants to bring a perfectly appropriate newspaper to your house, they can’t do it at 6:45 under the ordinance in the morning, they can do it at 7:15?”
“That’s right,” Lee answered.
Bauman then addressed your reporter, sitting in the work session audience, and asked what time the Sandy Springs Crier is delivered.
Appen Media drivers deliver the free newspaper primarily to private single-family homes in Sandy Springs. Because drivers often work other jobs during the day, to limit traffic and ensure timely delivery of news, papers are often distributed overnight.
Georgia Supreme court weighed in on similar ordinance
Richard T. Griffiths, president emeritus of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, said an American’s First Amendment rights do not expire at sunset.
“Delivering a free newspaper is not disruptive, and it is not up to the city of Sandy Springs to determine when people can express themselves,” he said. “What this is going to generate is a bunch of expensive lawsuits that the city of Sandy Springs is going to lose … bankrolling a bunch of lawyers to defend a lawsuit that they will lose.”
Griffiths said there have always been time and manner restrictions on First Amendment expression, but the proposed ordinances are overreaching and will make it difficult for residents to know what is legal and not.
“We can talk about the tension between safety and expression, but in this case, they are taking this to a far extreme,” Griffiths said. “This ordinance appears to be a solution in search of a nonexistent problem in Sandy Springs.”
In 1992 the City of Sylvania tried to curb the delivery of free newspapers through an ordinance.
The case made it all the way to the Georgia Supreme Court, which ruled that the law violated the freedom of speech and press under the United States and Georgia constitutions.
In throwing the law out, the court wrote that while it did not ban all newspapers within the city it “severely limits their distribution to homes.”
Defending the publisher in that case was David Hudson of Hull Barrett, an Augusta-based law firm. Hudson and Hull Barrett are part of the team currently representing Appen Media in its case against Sandy Springs over the city’s handling of police records.
Communications Director Carter Long told Appen Media that the city has not yet determined when the ordinances will come back for a public hearing.
This story was provided by WABE content partner Appen Media.
