Citizens in Charge

In order to get a measure onto the ballot, supporters of a petition effort must get voters to sign their petition, the key to which is often getting access to where voters are. Those in initiative states are likely used to seeing people collecting signatures are fairs and festivals, as well as in front of various stores and businesses: places where lots of people are. One place where a lot of voters usually go is their local pose office, so the nations 32,471 post offices would seem like a natural place for voters to be engaged. Unfortunately, the United States Postal Service’s effort to block petitioning at post offices will go into its tenth year on Tuesday, with no end in sight.

The law is that free speech activity - like circulating a petition - can occur anywhere in public space. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress “To establish Post Offices and Post Roads.” Under this mandate the Congress established the Postal Service as an independent agency. Given that the Postal Service is established by the Congress, and subsidized by the taxpayers, one would think it would fall squarely under the definition of “public” and therefore be open to free speech activity. The Postal Service thinks differently: they don’t want your First Amendment rights anywhere near their citizen-funded property.

On June 1, 2000, the Initiative and Referendum Institute filed a lawsuit against a new postal regulation that prohibited  collecting petition signature on post office-owned sidewalks. The Postal Service argues that because they are an independent agency their property does not fall under the definition of “public.”The U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. ruled in favor of the Postal Service and the case was appealed. The U.S. Appeals Court found that sidewalks parallel to streets were in fact public property open to free speech petitioning. The appeals court sent the question of whether the internal sidewalks of Postal Service property were open to free speech back to the DC District Court.

That was in 2003, and the judge in the case has refused to make a ruling since. Under federal law there is no time limit within which the case must be decided. This case certainly breathes meaning into the saying “justice delayed is justice denied.”