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Woman sues Cambridge for right to advertise movie series through leaflets on car windshields

Paula Soto, who shows documentaries in the community room of her apartment building, yesterday filed suit against the city of Cambridge, which she says is infringing her First Amendment rights by threatening to fine her for the leaflets she used to put on hundreds of car windshields each month.

In her suit, filed in US District Court in Boston, Soto charges Cambridge is the only city in the entire state to interpret a state law prohibiting "defacement" of "natural scenery" as applying to flyers for a non-profit group, such as her Up and Out:

Even if the City's ban on the placement of commercial advertising on car windows is itself constitutional - a point that Soto does not concede - its extension of that ban to noncommercial leafleting is still unconstitutional. Soto's leaflets concern political and social issues, and are indisputably non-commercial in nature. Given that non-commercial speech receives the greatest level of First Amendment protection, Cambridge's ban on placing noncommercial leaflets on parked cars violates Soto’s First Amendment rights.

In addition, neither the Defacement Statute nor the Defacement Ordinance apply to the conduct in question because they do not explicitly prohibit objects from being placed on automobiles, nor do they purport to apply to activities constituting the exercise of speech protected by the First Amendment.

Soto said she stopped putting leaflets on car windows in late 2011, after a Cambridge police officer spotted her and told her to stop that. In her suit, she says she and the the ACLU of Massachusetts tried for some 18 months to convince a city lawyer that the city's 20-year-old ban on leafletting was unconstitutional.

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PDF icon Copy of a Soto leaflet0 bytes


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Comments

Isn't this just littering at the end of the day? She's making the assumption that every driver will throw away (or keep) the leaflets, but of course tons of people will just throw them on the ground.

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or an "accessory to littering", I wonder? Two or more perps constitute a conspiracy, right? Could RICO be used in this case even though the conspirators never communicate about the crime beforehand? I bet the feds could get one of the actual litterers to flip on this woman.

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I am conflicted - I like the first amendment, but littering (which is my word for leafleting cars) is really annoying. I dislike finding leaflets that blow loose from windshields all over the neighborhood. I'd rather she (securely) plaster her speech all over telephone poles.

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... are the telephone poles? I suspect stapling leaflets to telephone poles would give the city an even stronger case against her. And if the poles are the property of some private concern, could it be considered vandalism or possibly destruction/defacement of private property?

Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com

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Flyering on poles is illegal in Cambridge.

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I am not against the movie's subject , but in general, how does placing windshield flyers on people's personal property be any more than trespassing and perhaps littering. Just stop it.

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Also, is Cambridge really the only town that fines people for leafletting cars?
But really, I wish she would just hand them out- it seems a little unfair to force unwitting people to expend precious time and energy throwing an unsolicited notice in the trash. Of course, there's those pesky circular ads, political flyers that get stuffed in the door by canvassers, and the half-dozen credit card offers I receive every month in the mail...

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It's punishable by fines to flier their neighborhood. That's what I've been told.

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Like they enforce leash laws and bikers running red light!

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... drivers running stop signs, blowing through crosswalks, and jaywalking.

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She's in Cambridge - wouldn't her time be better spent handing leaflets to people in a clearly constitutionally protected way? I'd suspect that the proportion of car-owners who even use their cars often enough to get a timely message is kind of low.

Handing things out would enable her to better target her audience anyway, depending on where she went to distribute them.

(although I agree that this is a ridiculous interpretation of defacement of scenery laws - sounds like the city is grasping at straws to prohibit something when they know better otherwise)

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She can hand out these flyers, as long as she agrees to make a reasonable donation to the Citys street sweeping and public works budget.

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I think the demographic car leaflets work with has shrunk dramatically. She should create a website, fb page, etc., and then post flyers in a few strategic locations at the street level. It'll be cheaper than printing so many darn windshield flyers.

In my neighborhood, my windshield, building and even mailbox are stuffed with church flyers. I'm Jewish. I'm not really religious. I'm not converting. I want off the snail mail list and I'm tired of finding the flyers on the ground, taped to the outside of my building, and on the lobby floor. One church sends roving packs of teens to spread the word and hand out materials to people personally. On public sidewalks, though, they have that right.

I will defend anyone's right to leaflet, as long as they don't damage property in the process. I don't consider placing a post card under a wiper, damage. I'd have a counter-claim every time I got a parking ticket, then.

We have to allow people the right to be annoying in order to protect all of our rights.

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There is no right to littering with leaflets. She can stand pretty much anywhere with a sign and hand out leaflets to people who want them as she sees fit.

Free speech doesn't mean you get to come onto my property to distribute your message whether it's my car windshield or my front porch to stuff things in my mail slot. Would it be ok to stick a flier in my open car window in the summer time too?

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There's the too restricted bulletin board at Cambridge Public Library and at Boston Public Library Copley Square both set way out of the way where most people never get to it ! There's the refusal of Cambridge Public Library to let community newspapers leave off their bundles. More leafleting please!... Learning about what's happening around our communities by leaflets is essential to democracy. Many of the graphics are interesting artwork. See also the books of local leaflets "Various..." http://artdeadlineslist.com/rlg/ See also the Cambridge Pamphleteer http://www.abebooks.com/pamphleteer-cambridge-ma-u...

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She does this still. I have just started a web site designed to create awareness. I am also collecting them and destroying the.
https://sites.google.com/site/upandoutarea4

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