MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
PECKHAM, Chief Judge.
Plaintiff, International Society for Krishna Consciousness of Berkeley, Inc. (“ISK-CON”), has brought this action on behalf of itself and its members seeking both a declaration that Sacramento city ordinance No. 2967 and Sacramento county ordinance §§ 5.64.010 et seq. are unconstitutional, and a permanent injunction restraining the enforcement of these laws against it. Essentially, these ordinances require each individual solicitor to obtain a permit from the proper governmental authority before making charitable solicitations within Sacramento city or county. The defendants are the Sacramento Chief of Police, Jack Kearnes, the Sacramento Sheriff, Duane Lowe, and the Sacramento County District Attorney, John V. Price. Jurisdiction is based on 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1343(3) and 1343(4). The case is presently before us on the plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction.
In considering plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, one must review two sets of standards; if either set is satisfied, the injunction may issue. First, we must consider whether (1) the plaintiff will suffer irreparable harm if the relief is not granted, (2) plaintiff is likely to prevail on the merits, (3) defendant will not be harmed more than plaintiff is helped by the issuance of an injunction, and (4) the injunction is in the public interest. The second test is whether serious questions are raised on the merits and the balance of hardships tips sharply in plaintiff’s favor. William Inglis and Sons Baking Co. v. ITT Continental Baking Co., 526 F.2d 86 (9th Cir. 1975). In applying both of these tests, we will first consider the issues raised and the likelihood of success on the merits and then proceed to the remaining factors.
The plaintiffs allege that these ordinances are unconstitutional in that they deprive plaintiffs of rights guaranteed under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. ISKCON is a religious organization whose members, as part of their religion, seek to distribute religious materials and solicit funds in Sacramento. This missionary aspect of the religion, known as Sankirtan, is more fully described in ISKCON v. Conlisk, 374 F.Supp. 1010 (W.D.Ill.1973), ISKCON v. New Orleans, 347 F.Supp. 945 (E.D.La.1972), ISKCON v. Englehardt, 425 F.Supp. 176 (D.Kan.1977) and ISKCON v. Rochford, 425 F.Supp. 734 (N.D.Ill.1977). There is no question but that the religious ritual of the Sankirtan, the dissemination of religious tracts in combination with a request for donations, is within the protection of the First Amendment. Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 452, 58 S.Ct. 666, 82 L.Ed. 949 (1938); Schneider v. State, 308 U.S. 147, 163, 60 S.Ct. 146, 84 L.Ed. 155 (1939); Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 304-5, 60 S.Ct. 900, 84 L.Ed. 1213 (1940); Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105, 63 S.Ct. 870, 87 L.Ed. 1292 (1943); Martin v. Struthers, 319 U.S. 141, 143, 63 S.Ct. 862, 87 L.Ed. 1313 (1943). Similarly, plaintiff may raise the question of the statute’s facial constitutionality without having applied for a permit. Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. at 452, 60 S.Ct. 146; Schneider v. State, supra; Cantwell v. Connecticut, supra; Murdock v. Pennsylvania, supra; Staub v. City of Baxley, 355 U.S. 313, 78 S.Ct. 277, 2 L.Ed.2d 302 (1958); Hynes v. Mayor of Oradell, 425 U.S. 610, 96 S.Ct. 1755, 48 L.Ed.2d 243 (1976).
The two ordinances in question are identical in all relevant respects. Adopted in response to legislative findings that frauds were being perpetrated on the Sacramento citizenry by persons presenting themselves as soliciting for charities, the ordinances establish a permit system to regulate such solicitations. A Charitable Solicitations Committee is established with the power to issue permits for all charitable solicitations. It is unlawful to solicit without a permit. Any person seeking to solicit for any charitable purpose, except where the solicitation occurs solely among' the members of the [119] soliciting organization, is conducted by an employer among his employees, or takes place at an assembly or service, is required to submit a permit application to the committee containing certain specified information. The committee is then required to review the application and either deny or issue a permit for solicitation. In passing upon the application the committee is instructed by the ordinances to consider ten criteria, most of which are designed to reveal possible fraudulent intent. If any of the criteria are found to be unsatisfied, the permit must be denied. This aspect of the permit procedure is discussed at length below. If the committee issues a permit, its duration may not exceed 90 days. The permit may be renewed at the end of the period, and it can be revoked at any earlier time.
The ordinances do not attempt to regulate the time, manner and place of the exercise of First Amendment rights in order to accommodate both the rights of those seeking to solicit and collateral state interests such as traffic control. The ordinances do not require that an individual obtain a permit in order to control the times during which solicitations are made or the locations at which solicitations are made. Permits are not required to control the number of persons soliciting in a given area. On the contrary, the purpose of the permit system is to regulate the content of speech, denying permits to solicit to those “likely” to perpetrate frauds and making solicitation without a permit illegal. The legislative intent unequivocally demonstrates that the purpose of the ordinances is to restrain those persons who are “likely” to commit frauds from soliciting. The critical index in ascertaining who is to be granted a permit and who is to be denied is the type of speech in which one will “probably” engage. Permits are issued only to those persons who, based on the criteria in the ordinances as applied by the committee, will not engage in fraudulent activity. If the committee finds that a permit should not be issued, then the applicant cannot solicit without violating the law, regardless of whether his solicitation is in fact fraudulent. An individual is totally restrained from solicitation if he does not have a permit. On the basis of these facts, we conclude that the ordinances operate as a prior restraint on the exercise of speech, restraining its exercise in advance of its invocation based upon the finding that the speech to be engaged in will be fraudulent.
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MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
PECKHAM, Chief Judge.
Plaintiff, International Society for Krishna Consciousness of Berkeley, Inc. (“ISK-CON”), has brought this action on behalf of itself and its members seeking both a declaration that Sacramento city ordinance No. 2967 and Sacramento county ordinance §§ 5.64.010 et seq. are unconstitutional, and a permanent injunction restraining the enforcement of these laws against it. Essentially, these ordinances require each individual solicitor to obtain a permit from the proper governmental authority before making charitable solicitations within Sacramento city or county. The defendants are the Sacramento Chief of Police, Jack Kearnes, the Sacramento Sheriff, Duane Lowe, and the Sacramento County District Attorney, John V. Price. Jurisdiction is based on 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1343(3) and 1343(4). The case is presently before us on the plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction.
In considering plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, one must review two sets of standards; if either set is satisfied, the injunction may issue. First, we must consider whether (1) the plaintiff will suffer irreparable harm if the relief is not granted, (2) plaintiff is likely to prevail on the merits, (3) defendant will not be harmed more than plaintiff is helped by the issuance of an injunction, and (4) the injunction is in the public interest. The second test is whether serious questions are raised on the merits and the balance of hardships tips sharply in plaintiff’s favor. William Inglis and Sons Baking Co. v. ITT Continental Baking Co., 526 F.2d 86 (9th Cir. 1975). In applying both of these tests, we will first consider the issues raised and the likelihood of success on the merits and then proceed to the remaining factors.
The plaintiffs allege that these ordinances are unconstitutional in that they deprive plaintiffs of rights guaranteed under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. ISKCON is a religious organization whose members, as part of their religion, seek to distribute religious materials and solicit funds in Sacramento. This missionary aspect of the religion, known as Sankirtan, is more fully described in ISKCON v. Conlisk, 374 F.Supp. 1010 (W.D.Ill.1973), ISKCON v. New Orleans, 347 F.Supp. 945 (E.D.La.1972), ISKCON v. Englehardt, 425 F.Supp. 176 (D.Kan.1977) and ISKCON v. Rochford, 425 F.Supp. 734 (N.D.Ill.1977). There is no question but that the religious ritual of the Sankirtan, the dissemination of religious tracts in combination with a request for donations, is within the protection of the First Amendment. Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 452, 58 S.Ct. 666, 82 L.Ed. 949 (1938); Schneider v. State, 308 U.S. 147, 163, 60 S.Ct. 146, 84 L.Ed. 155 (1939); Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 304-5, 60 S.Ct. 900, 84 L.Ed. 1213 (1940); Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105, 63 S.Ct. 870, 87 L.Ed. 1292 (1943); Martin v. Struthers, 319 U.S. 141, 143, 63 S.Ct. 862, 87 L.Ed. 1313 (1943). Similarly, plaintiff may raise the question of the statute’s facial constitutionality without having applied for a permit. Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. at 452, 60 S.Ct. 146; Schneider v. State, supra; Cantwell v. Connecticut, supra; Murdock v. Pennsylvania, supra; Staub v. City of Baxley, 355 U.S. 313, 78 S.Ct. 277, 2 L.Ed.2d 302 (1958); Hynes v. Mayor of Oradell, 425 U.S. 610, 96 S.Ct. 1755, 48 L.Ed.2d 243 (1976).
The two ordinances in question are identical in all relevant respects. Adopted in response to legislative findings that frauds were being perpetrated on the Sacramento citizenry by persons presenting themselves as soliciting for charities, the ordinances establish a permit system to regulate such solicitations. A Charitable Solicitations Committee is established with the power to issue permits for all charitable solicitations. It is unlawful to solicit without a permit. Any person seeking to solicit for any charitable purpose, except where the solicitation occurs solely among' the members of the [119] soliciting organization, is conducted by an employer among his employees, or takes place at an assembly or service, is required to submit a permit application to the committee containing certain specified information. The committee is then required to review the application and either deny or issue a permit for solicitation. In passing upon the application the committee is instructed by the ordinances to consider ten criteria, most of which are designed to reveal possible fraudulent intent. If any of the criteria are found to be unsatisfied, the permit must be denied. This aspect of the permit procedure is discussed at length below. If the committee issues a permit, its duration may not exceed 90 days. The permit may be renewed at the end of the period, and it can be revoked at any earlier time.
The ordinances do not attempt to regulate the time, manner and place of the exercise of First Amendment rights in order to accommodate both the rights of those seeking to solicit and collateral state interests such as traffic control. The ordinances do not require that an individual obtain a permit in order to control the times during which solicitations are made or the locations at which solicitations are made. Permits are not required to control the number of persons soliciting in a given area. On the contrary, the purpose of the permit system is to regulate the content of speech, denying permits to solicit to those “likely” to perpetrate frauds and making solicitation without a permit illegal. The legislative intent unequivocally demonstrates that the purpose of the ordinances is to restrain those persons who are “likely” to commit frauds from soliciting. The critical index in ascertaining who is to be granted a permit and who is to be denied is the type of speech in which one will “probably” engage. Permits are issued only to those persons who, based on the criteria in the ordinances as applied by the committee, will not engage in fraudulent activity. If the committee finds that a permit should not be issued, then the applicant cannot solicit without violating the law, regardless of whether his solicitation is in fact fraudulent. An individual is totally restrained from solicitation if he does not have a permit. On the basis of these facts, we conclude that the ordinances operate as a prior restraint on the exercise of speech, restraining its exercise in advance of its invocation based upon the finding that the speech to be engaged in will be fraudulent.
As a general rule, a statute which seeks to restrain speech requires that there be a “clear and present danger” that a substantial evil will result, American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 70 S.Ct. 674, 94 L.Ed. 925 (1950), or more precisely, “the gravity of the ‘evil,’ discounted by its improbability, justifies such invasion of free speech as is necessary to avoid the danger,” Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494, 510, 71 S.Ct. 857, 868, 95 L.Ed. 1137 (1950). In addition, such statutes are constitutionally permissible only if there exists no less drastic means of protecting the interest of the state. Carrol v. Commissioners of Princess Anne, 393 U.S. 175, 89 S.Ct. 347, 21 L.Ed.2d 325 (1968); Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479, 81 S.Ct. 247, 5 L.Ed.2d 231 (1960); Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60, 80 S.Ct. 536, 4 L.Ed.2d 559 (1960).
The central concern underlying the doctrine of prior restraint is censorship. Prior restraint of speech based upon a belief as to its probable content involves a determination by the state of what is proper speech, and courts have jealously protected the First Amendment against such intrusion by the state except in very limited circumstances. The First Amendment was adopted in large part to avoid such restraint and the attendant evil of censorship, Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. at 451-52, 60 S.Ct. 146, and as such any system of prior restraint bears “a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity,” Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58, 70, 83 S.Ct. 631, 639, 9 L.Ed.2d 584 (1963).
To sustain an attack against its constitutionality, a statute which constitutes a prior restraint must seek to restrain only speech which is unprotected, and must [120] be designed in such a fashion as to filter out those who will engage in protected speech from those who will engage in unprotected speech, restraining only the latter. The margin of error permissible in this filtering process is directly related to the severity of the harm sought to be avoided. If the restraint operates through a permit system or other form of state permission, as in the present case, the criteria for obtaining a permit must be strictly limited in order to protect against administrative officials arbitrarily denying permits to those who would engage in protected speech. Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad, 420 U.S. 546, 95 S.Ct. 1239, 43 L.Ed.2d 448 (1975); Shuttleworth v. Birmingham, 382 U.S. 87, 86 S.Ct. 211, 15 L.Ed.2d 176 (1965); Staub v. City of Baxley, supra; Kunz v. New York, 340 U.S. 290, 71 S.Ct. 312, 95 L.Ed. 280 (1951); Niemotko v. Maryland, 340 U.S. 268, 71 S.Ct. 325, 95 L.Ed. 267 (1951); Largent v. Texas, 318 U.S. 418, 63 S.Ct. 667, 87 L.Ed. 873 (1943); Cantwell v. Connecticut, supra; Schneider v. State, supra. In addition, the system of issuing permits or granting state permission must be ringed with adequate procedural safeguards that persons seeking to engage in protected speech will not be wrongfully restrained for an excessive time by an improper administrative decision. Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad, 420 U.S. at 559, 95 S.Ct. 1239; Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U.S. 51, 85 S.Ct. 734, 13 L.Ed.2d 649 (1965); Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 60 S.Ct. 736, 84 L.Ed. 1093 (1940); LeFlore v. Robinson, 434 F.2d 933 (5th Cir. 1970) vacated on other grounds, 446 F.2d 715 (5th Cir. 1971); Collin v. Chicago Park District, 460 F.2d 746 (7th Cir. 1972); Snyder v. Board of Trustees of the Univ. of Illinois, 286 F.Supp. 927 (N.D.Ill.1968).
A long line of cases has held prior restraints unconstitutional because the speech sought to be restrained was in fact protected. In Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 65 S.Ct. 315, 89 L.Ed. 430 (1945), the petitioner had been found in contempt for violation of an injunction restraining him from soliciting members for a union without first obtaining an organizer’s card. The Supreme Court reversed the conviction, finding:
The statements forbidden were not themselves unlawful, had no tendency to incite to unlawful action, involved no element of clear and present danger to the public welfare . . . [323 U.S. at 536, 65 S.Ct. at 325.]
If the exercise of the rights of free speech and free assembly cannot be made a crime, we do not think this can be accomplished by the device of requiring previous registration as a condition for exercising them and making such a condition the foundation for restraining in advance their exercise and for imposing a penalty for violating such a restraining order.
323 U.S. at 540, 65 S.Ct. at 327. The prior restraints in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, 91 S.Ct. 2140, 29 L.Ed.2d 822(1971) and Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart, 427 U.S. 539, 96 S.Ct. 2791, 49 L.Ed.2d 683 (1976), were found unconstitutional for the same reason; the speech to be engaged in was protected.
In the present case we need not be troubled with the question of whether the city or county may permissibly punish the activities for which they have manifested concern, for such fraudulent solicitations clearly may be proscribed and punished by criminal statute.
In a second line of cases, permit requirements and other forms of governmentally imposed prior restraints have been held unconstitutional even though the speech sought to be restrained was unprotected. In these cases the infirmity was the fact that the system of restraints operated in such a fashion that both protected and unprotected speech would be restrained, and thus some persons would be wrongfully denied the exercise of their constitutional rights. An early case demonstrating this point was Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697, 51 S.Ct. 625, 75 L.Ed. 1357 (1931), in which a court, pursuant to a state statute, had issued an injunction against the publishing of a newspaper after finding that the paper constituted a “public nuisance” by printing “malicious, scandalous and defamatory” ar[121] tides. The Supreme Court vacated the injunction, finding it to be a prior restraint. It seems clear that the Court’s major concern was the denial of future speech based on past “abuse,” and that the showing of past abuse of First Amendment rights did not sufficiently support the conclusion that there would be future abuse.
In Lovell v. City of Griffin, supra, the Supreme Court considered a municipal ordinance requiring written permission from the City Manager in order to distribute literature of any kind, whether or not for sale. Plaintiff, a Jehovah’s Witness, attempted to distribute a religious pamphlet without first having sought permission and was fined $50. The Court found the municipal system unconstitutional on its face as constituting a prior restraint on protected speech. Similarly, a municipal statute requiring that those persons seeking to solicit door to door must obtain the permission of the Chief of Police, and mandating that the Chief deny such permission to those “not of good character” or found to be canvassing for a project “not free of fraud,” was found unconstitutional in Schneider v. State, supra. The Court held that by vesting such discretion in the Chief of Police, the constitutionally protected rights of individuals were threatened by the potential for abuse of that discretion. The Court also stated, however, that the interest in preventing fraud might accommodate some kind of restrictions:
Conceding that fraudulent appeals may be made in the name of charity and religion, we hold a municipality cannot, for this reason, require all who wish to disseminate ideas to present them first to police authorities for their consideration and approval, with a discretion in the police to say some ideas may, while others may not, be carried to the homes of citizens; some persons may, while others may not, disseminate information from house to house. Frauds may be denounced as offenses and punished by law. Trespasses may similarly be forbidden. If it is said that these means are less efficient and convenient than bestowal of power on police authorities to decide what information may be disseminated from house to house, and who may impart the information, the answer is that considerations of this sort do not empower a municipality to abridge freedom of speech and press.
We are not to be taken as holding that commercial soliciting and canvassing may be subjected to such regulations as the ordinance requires. Nor do we hold that the town may not fix reasonable hours when canvassing may be done by persons having such objects as the petitioner. Doubtless there are other features of such activities which may be regulated in the public interest without prior licensing or other invasion of constitutional liberty.
308 U.S. at 164-65, 60 S.Ct. at 152.
A permit statute was also found unconstitutional in Cantwell v. Connecticut, supra, where the ordinance required a council to determine whether the cause for which donations were being solicited was religious or a bona fide object of charity. The Court stated that allowing the officials to determine what constituted a religion created a threat to the liberty of the populous to freely exercise the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.
The list of cases striking down similar statutes is extensive,