'Peddler, hawker' code to be repealed

“Peddlers and hawkers” will soon be

allowed to make door-to-door sales in Whitefish.

Whitefish City Council decided at an

Aug. 1 meeting to repeal a city code prohibiting door-to-door

solicitation after City Attorney Mary VanBuskirk warned it may not

stand up to a Constitutional challenge.

The code would not meet “judicial

scrutiny if challenged on First Amendment grounds,” VanBuskirk

noted, “because the code provision prohibits all door-to-door sales

without exception.” She referred to First Amendment cases based on

commercial speech.

She suggested the city would be best

served by repealing the code and “doing nothing so we can maintain

constitutional standards.” The city should instead rely on criminal

prosecution for trespassing, disturbing the peace, nuisance and

disorderly to protect residents, she said.

The solicitation code prohibits the

“practice of going in and upon private residences in the city...by

solicitors, peddlers, hawkers” and is punished as a misdemeanor.

The code was enacted in 1956 and revised in 1984. Exceptions are

made for farmers selling food they produced themselves and to

permanently established residents who are voters in Flathead

County.

After repeal, any future regulation of

solicitation, VanBuskirk noted, must be content neutral, narrowly

tailored and should allow alternative methods for solicitors. The

city may exercise discretion in regulating the time, place and

manner of door-to-door sales, as long as the restrictions aren’t

content based.

Whitefish Police Chief Bill Dial told

the council he can’t remember a single incident with a solicitor in

his career as Whitefish police chief.

“If someone comes to your house, you

can ask them to leave,” Dial said. “If they don’t leave, they’re

trespassing.”

The Pilot archive of police calls shows

four incidents in the past five years where residents have

complained about door-to-door sales.

City manager Chuck Stearns noted that

residents can take it upon themselves to put a notice on their door

if they don’t want solicitors.