Weissman v. City of Alamogordo, NM

472 F. Supp. 425, 5 Media L. Rep. (BNA) 1585, 1979 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11563
CourtDistrict Court, D. New Mexico
DecidedJune 21, 1979
Docket79-117, 79-118 and 79-119
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 472 F. Supp. 425 (Weissman v. City of Alamogordo, NM) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. New Mexico primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Weissman v. City of Alamogordo, NM, 472 F. Supp. 425, 5 Media L. Rep. (BNA) 1585, 1979 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11563 (D.N.M. 1979).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

PAYNE, District Judge.

THIS MATTER comes before the Court upon plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment. 1 For the reasons stated below the motion will be granted in part and denied in part.

This action arose after cases 79-117, 79-118 and 79-119 were consolidated by order of this Court. Each case was an action for declaratory and injunctive relief, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and 28 U.S.C. §§ 2201 and 2202, brought by two members 2 of the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (hereinafter, the Unification Church) to enjoin the enforcement of, and declare unconstitutional, certain Green River type ordinances of the New Mexico municipalities of Alamogordo and Grants, and the County of Los Alamos.

By their complaint plaintiffs allege the following: that they are members of the Unification Church, a California non-profit corporation holding federal and state tax exemptions as a religious, non-profit organization; that the Unification Church was founded in 1954 in Seoul, Korea, and since that time has established itself in over eleven countries and around the world with functioning church centers in over one-hundred and twenty cities throughout the United States; that the Church emphasizes evangelical missionary engagements including proselytizing and solicitation of funds door to door to support the Church’s many activities; that the defendants are municipal corporations, duly created and authorized pursuant to the laws of the State of New *427 Mexico; that the individual plaintiffs and the Unification Church are preparing an itinerary for traveling evangelical teams to visit the State of New Mexico, specifically the defendant municipalities; and that presently, plaintiffs have no adequate means of access to the residents of the defendant municipalities for the purpose of religious proselytizing and solicitation of funds, without jeopardizing and exposing themselves to imminent and immediate arrest and prosecution or threat of arrest and prosecution by the defendant municipalities under their respective Green River type ordinances.

Plaintiffs further contend that they are entitled to declaratory and injunctive relief because the Green River type ordinances are unconstitutional on their face, and as construed and applied to plaintiffs’ proselytizing and solicitation of funds from the public, in that the ordinances abridge their freedom of association, speech, assembly and free exercise of religious beliefs and deny Due Process and Equal Protection of the law, as guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution.

Defendants have denied that their respective ordinances are constitutionally invalid on their face. They further contend that the ordinances are not invalid as applied to plaintiffs and that, specifically, plaintiffs’ proposed actions are commercial, rather than religious, activity properly regulated by the ordinances in question.

The sole issue on this motion for summary judgment, however, is whether the ordinances are constitutionally invalid on their face. Accordingly, the Court makes no finding regarding the political, religious or commercial nature of plaintiffs’ activities or whether the ordinances are invalid as applied to plaintiffs.

THE GRANTS AND LOS ALAMOS ORDINANCES

The Los Alamos ordinance is similar to the Grants ordinance in all material respects. Accordingly, only Grants City Ordinance No. 150 will be set out below. It is a typical Green River Ordinance and states in material part as follows:

The practice of going in and upon private residences in the Town of Grants, New Mexico, by solicitors, peddlers, hawkers, itinerant merchants and transient vendors of merchandise, not having been requested or invited to do so by the owner or owners, occupant or occupants, of said private residence or residences, for the purpose of soliciting or hawking the same, is hereby declared to be a nuisance, and punishable as such nuisance as a misdemeanor.

Thus, the Grants and Los Alamos ordinances flatly prohibit door to door solicitation without distinguishing between commercial and non-commercial endeavors. This distinction is crucial, however, because the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that Green River Ordinances cannot constitutionally prohibit religious or non-commercial door to door solicitation. Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 306, 60 S.Ct. 900, 84 L.Ed. 1213 (1939); Martin v. Struthers, 319 U.S. 141, 63 S.Ct. 862, 87 L.Ed. 1313 (1943).

This principle was recently illustrated in the case of Love v. Mayor, City of Cheyenne, Wyoming, 448 F.Supp. 128 (D.Wyo.1978). In a factual setting remarkably similar to those alleged in the instant case, the Unification Church sought to engage in a campaign of “literature evangelism” in which members of the church were to go from door to door speaking with local residents about religious matters, distributing church literature, and soliciting donations. They were informed, however, that a Cheyenne City ordinance — identical with the ordinances in the instant case — prohibited their activities. The church members thereupon sought injunctive and declaratory relief, and Judge Brimmer held that the solicitation activities of the Unification Church were non-commercial in nature; that the ordinance was being applied without distinguishing between commercial and non-commercial activity; and that the ordinance as applied to the Unification Church was therefore constitutionally invalid.

*428 Thus, as applied to religious solicitation, the Grants and Los Alamos Ordinances are constitutionally invalid. As applied to commercial solicitation, however, the ordinances are valid. In Breard v. Alexandria, 341 U.S. 622, 71 S.Ct. 920, 95 L.Ed. 1233 (1950) the Supreme Court held that a Green River Ordinance similar in all material respects to those in the instant case, was constitutionally valid when applied to prohibit commercial door to door solicitation. Likewise, in Green River v. Fuller Brush, 65 F.2d 112 (10th Cir. 1933) the Tenth Circuit upheld a similar ordinance under similar circumstances.

In summary, then, the Los Alamos and Grants ordinances are invalid as applied to religious solicitation but valid as applied to commercial solicitation. And if the issue before this Court on this present motion for summary judgment were whether the ordinances are valid as applied to plaintiffs’ proposed activities, the remaining question would be whether plaintiffs’ proposed activities were commercial or non-commercial according to the test set out in

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472 F. Supp. 425, 5 Media L. Rep. (BNA) 1585, 1979 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11563, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/weissman-v-city-of-alamogordo-nm-nmd-1979.