Landlords need not provide voter information.

Byline: Barbara L. Jones

The First Amendment protects citizens from compelled speech, even for a really good cause.

That was the ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Wilhelmina Wright on March 2, finding St. Paul and Minneapolis ordinances requiring landlords to provide new tenants with voter-registration facially unconstitutional.

The ordinances have been in effect in St. Paul since 2018 and Minneapolis since 2016. To comply, a landlord must distribute a flyer designed and provided by the city clerk of the city where the property is located. Failure to comply was a petty misdemeanor in St. Paul and could have meant the loss of a rental license in Minneapolis.

Wright granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs and permanently enjoined enforcement of the ordinances. The plaintiffs' complaint requested damages and attorney fees, which Wright said must be requested in a separate motion.

"The Court recognizes Defendants' laudable goal of encouraging participation in such a fundamental practice of our democracy as voting. But this goal cannot be achieved by the unconstitutional means of compelled speech," Wright ruled.

Facial challenge

The plaintiffs are a nonpartisan nonprofit corporation, Minnesota Voters Alliance, formed with the primary purpose of educating and empowering the electorate, and individual landlords. Landlords in both cities are members of the alliance. The plaintiffs oppose the ordinance and their underlying policy but distribute the flyers because they fear criminal prosecution.

The group is best known for Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky, a case that led to the U.S. Supreme Court invalidating the state's broadrestrictions on voters wearing "political" attire to the polls.

To prevail on a facial challenge, the party challenging the government's action must establish that no set of circumstances exists under which the law would be valid or that the law lacks any plainly legitimate sweep, said Wright. In a First Amendment context, a law also may be invalidated on a facial challenge as overbroad if a substantial number of its applications are unconstitutional, judged in relation to the law's plainly legitimate sweep, the judge continued.

The court proceeded with a strict-scrutiny standard of review, contrary to the objections of the defendants. The defendants argued that the claims pertain to government speech that is immune from a First Amendment freedom-of-speech challenge. In the alternative, the defendants argued...

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