Court to rule on permit law for door-to-door advocacy
Justices agree to hear Jehovah's Witnesses

Linda Greenhouse / New York Times 16oct01

Washington -- Six years after ruling that the Constitution protects the right to distribute anonymous campaign literature, the Supreme Court agreed yesterday to decide whether that right extends to anonymous door-to-door advocacy for a political or religious cause.

The new case is an appeal by the Jehovah's Witnesses, whose victories in a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1930s and '40s helped define the modern contours of the First Amendment. The group is challenging an ordinance in a small Ohio village that requires anyone wanting to engage in door-to-door advocacy -- which the Witnesses regard as an essential part of their public ministry -- to obtain and display a permit that includes the advocate's name.

In upholding the ordinance earlier this year, the federal appeals court in Cincinnati ruled that a 1995 Supreme Court decision that protected anonymous political leafleting was not applicable to door-to-door advocates or canvassers because "the very act of going door to door requires the canvassers to reveal a portion of their identities."

Although Jehovah's Witnesses try to engage people in discussing the Bible, the issue before the court applies beyond religion to all cause-related speech.

In fact, the justices turned down a portion of the appeal that specifically raised the issue of which constitutional standard to apply to government restrictions on religious speech. The court granted review on only the anonymity issue.

In their appeal, the Witnesses quoted from the majority opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens in the anonymous-leaflet case: "Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority."

That decision, McIntyre vs. Ohio, dealt with a state law. At issue in the new case, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society vs. Stratton, Ohio, No. 00-1737, is an ordinance adopted in 1998 by a village with a population of under 300, situated on Ohio's border with West Virginia. Stratton had a history of hostility toward Jehovah's Witnesses, who came from their nearby congregation in Wellsville to conduct their ministry on the village's doorsteps.

According to trial testimony, Mayor John Abdalla told a group of Witnesses shortly before the ordinance was adopted that they were not permitted in Stratton and that people had moved there to avoid them.

The ordinance requires anyone who wants to go to a private residence for the "purposes of advertising, promoting, selling and/or explaining any product,

service, organization or cause" to register and obtain a permit from the mayor's office. In its original form, later amended, the ordinance gave residents a line to check indicating that they did not want to be visited by Jehovah's Witnesses.

Jehovah's Witnesses, members of a Christian denomination that dates to the late 19th century, have brought more than two dozen Supreme Court cases over the years, winning the right for their children not to have to salute the flag and for their adherents to conduct their in-person religious mission. The court's rulings in these cases have established broad principles of constitutional protection for political dissenters and religious minorities.