the claim that the ban was necessary to protect the gaming and tourism industry a few years later in this case in two thousand and two the court held that las vegas authorities could not prohibit the distribution of literature on free much street despite the very same claim that the ban was necessary to protect the gaming and tourism industry and the investment petition was denied despite these binding precedents the city is in forcing a broadly construed anti solicitation ordinance in a way that prohibits not just the distribution of commercial literature or newspapers on free much street but also poor political religious and religious activity if it contains information inviting the reader to support or join the organization the a c l u no that is prohibited under this ordinance from distributing its most basic pair flip or bashir because it invites or because they c every conceivable communication by adversity groups that has any solicitation aspect regardless of whether the group is raising money on the spot or simply asking the reader to join the organization your honor this is not an abstract problem this is how the defendants enforced and can show the ordinance and the record does it make any difference does it make any difference this in the record has been correspondence going back and forth the solicitation cannot invite people to join the organization or as a member or to bring contributions very on the spot or in the future of ok now analytically doesn't make a difference whether the restriction only bans on the spot contributions by charitable organizations or political organizations the answer to that question your honor would be that that type of  activity might be different than asking a reader to make a future donation but in a public forum it probably shouldn't make a difference your honor because it's still subject to time place manner analysis and under time place  separating from the word you know saying give me a book is content neutral right i can envision a solicitation ordinance that is content neutral advertising activities that my clients are prohibited from doing so so if coca cola for instance or a telephone company wanted to sign up members they could simply enter into an agreement with the free much meat limited like build a company set up a like that in the record that would be ok is that right is that we're going to stay under this ordinance the difference is that most brochures by advocacy organizations in fact invite the reader to support the organization to soliciting that that's what makes this con content ordinance moreover it requires the policeman to read the ordinance i mean to read the communication and figure out if if the if the communication is government when government regulation discriminates among speech related activities in a public forum the equal protection clause negates equality so he implicitly yes saying that that it was connected to first amendment  that afternoon may please the court taught by somebody of the free market street experience going to liability company and joshi lackey as manager like reserve five minutes of our time for my from the city of las vegas it's important i think to remember how we're here and what we're here on and how we got to this point we're here on a summary judgment ruling from the district court which is based upon an order of remey an from as it turns out this very same panel based upon that order of remey and there were three issues that this court had remained into the district court for consideration in light of the fact that this panel had disagreed with the district court judge that the ball remain on was the question of the tabling ordinance and the first amendment challenge to the table in ordinance that the a c l u it presented specifically this court's instructions words that the a c l u might want to consider amending its complaint and that it would have to present some evidence that this activity that it was proposing was actually speech within the meaning of the first amendment in order to maintain such a claim since that is what the basis of their claim as the final point was this issue of an overall injunction which they solicitation ordinance was originally adopted what it did what it does and why it is needed for purposes of the mall and it's important to understand that is not an ordinance unlike a lot of the other ordinances which were addressed in your original opinion in this case this ordinance is in a separate chapter because it is the ordinance that applies throughout the city this is another words a citywide ordinance not something that was adopted specifically with respect to the fremon stops on busses parking garages within i can't remember the exact footage i think is twenty feet with an a t m so five feet where ten feet within the entrance of any sort of building or structure and the last part of it it also restricts solicitation within the scope of the fremont street experience for this street mall and that seems to be as i understand the basis of the claim the only challenge made there's no challenge that i have seen been made to the ordinance in general with respect to turning to that so we have just we have this overall ordinance that applies throughout the city it restricts illustration in certain locations one of which is the fremont street experience mall and i as far as i know that's the only basis upon which it's been challenge here is within the confines of the mall turning to that i understand the a c l u is arguments about content based however if that argument were accepted than ever solicitation ordinances content pace because by definition if it's focusing on solicitation the government's trying to focus on a particular type of activity they're going to say well it's content based because it it's it's singling out solicitation it doesn't apply to all other forms of speech so hence it's content based that obviously cannot be the law because if that were law you could never have a solicitation restriction pure and simple and obviously if that were really the case i'm i'm unclear why we're here on remained then or why there was even a remote and then because that was the exact same argument they made to you the last time we were here identical argument identical cases identical pleadings i mean on remain and on this as we have pointed out in the brief the a c l u did nothing on this case other then resubmit all of the same stuff that it had submitted  in the prior people there's not a single piece of new paper not a single new witness new piece of evidence of any sort all over hear back from their perspective is were we arguing the exact same thing i'm unclear why would there was even a remote if that was really the inten because they presented absolutely nothing on that the the content based argument is the exact i mean i don't have a transcript of what the argument was last time we were here but it's the exact same argument from our perspective we obviously don't think that holds water because as i've already the substance here which is the question of in other words no taking is this ordinance sufficiently narrowly tailored in to achieve what the city is trying to achieve down to three months for the experience focusing on that obviously there are other aspects of the ordinance where covers other areas but aren't before are before the court that issue under the law the question presented is is the city's interest vance less effectively without the ordinance that's the test doesn't meet that test that's the question you have to decide the district court believe that it did in obviously we believe firmly that it did if you look at the record that we presented tabs at seven eight nine ten and six of the supplemental excerpts of record we presented to sort of forms of evidence to the district court on this point and it's important to note again  presented nothing to rebut any of that other than what they had already submitted in the first appeal on this and that evidence that we submitted again two categories one was the initial evidence that was presented when the ordinance was initially adopted and that was clear back i believe in one thousand nine hundred ninety five and what the city had considered then it held extensive number of public hearings on this matter concerning the need for this ordinance it heard from various or consultants advertising executives  tourism officials from the los vegas public body the las vegas convention and visitors authority all recognizing this is what you're going to have to do if you want to be able to maintain the environment of this facility and if you want this facility to succeed you're going to have to do that because you're not going to get people to pay you rent to have their businesses in there if they're going to be subject to solicitation whether it be from competitors of their own i mean if i'm going to let me give an example i want to set up a t shirt stand in the free muster experience sell las vegas souvenir t shirts i want to and i have to pay you the going rate i think right now is three thousand and thirty five hundred dollars a month rent for the three months for experience i am not going to pay that if joe blow can set up a table either inside the mall or right outside the mall in the public sidewalk and sell those shirts for substantially less and then be able to walk in and walk up to my customers with a piece of paper that says teacher it's five dollars right this way it's not going to succeed so the question he has is is the government's interest here i don't think anyone can seriously quarrel that the government has significant governmental interest at stake in this they've spent tens of millions of dollars to construct it and in order for it to survive and be economically viable under the law it has to be able to generate revenue sufficiently to cover its expenses and its operating budget i believe from the record is somewhere in the seven to ten million dollars a year price range in order to do that they have to be able to rent out space in the mall and i believe it's tab ten of the supplemental excerpt record if you look at that you will see i don't know what's very small and i apologize all the little dots throughout the mall area all those small dots all those small dots for the most part are people who have are over thirty of them between thirty and fifty who pay rent every month for the right to do business in their operate their their little shop within the mall and sell their goods prevent competitors from the listening business i can't i can't tell you that that's the four that we were concerned about the a c l u i can't not like i think that would be political messages and i think it would be disingenuous for me to say we were not concerned about we were only concerned about business competition i don't think that's accurate i think that we were concerned about maintaining the overall environment business competition is certainly one thing that would be a big problem but competition way by if they want to sell things they want one of the things that they originally were trying to do here was sell a message bearing shirts and messages bearing merchandise much sort of selling memberships ok how are they competing with us in that regard of memberships i don't think they are competing with us so what's the rationale for excluding the the member of the if you look at what the district court had said on that issue the district court said the city could not enforce it ordinance that just had contact information what the city for example just membership information that's what the district court said that's at the record that there are excerpts of record at one of the nine what the district court's ruling was  city could to the to the extent there was competition couldn't force it solicitations and that's what the district court drew that line and we understand that line and i don't believe that it's it's really hard to follow the district court said if they had contact information that they were free to submit that out join the a c l u here's the phone number support the a c l u here's the phone number that's we acknowledge different than competing with the entities that are paying us  inside the facility let's assume they're selling t shirts that say seal you on them with him when they're competing they are competing with the person who might be right beside them selling las vegas teachers think of paying three thousand dollars or or message slax me as not and that in direct competition can i envision a lot of situations where they would not be in direct competition of course they can just just as in one world one family and let's let's take the typical family it's walking on fremont street and they are they still selling t shirts and are they competing for the same tourism dollars sure they are you might not you might get one person who doesn't want the a c l u t shirt you might get somebody else who does but that's that was exactly the point i believe your honor with respect to the one world one family case in waikiki that was exactly what was going on and what those this court had ruled was they can't the people who are having to pay taxes that own property like can't compete if you're going to allow these people to basically set up a table and say ok now i'm selling souvenir t v or it's the and the flipside to your hypothetical is the only way then we could control it is if we got engaged if we got ourselves involved in regulating the message now we can't prohibit people as long as they are selling certain types of merchandise that is expressive but we can stop the other ones who are expelling merchandise which they would characterize as expressed in the world wildlife fund support nevada deserts i mean is that that is a quandary we can't get into nor would we want to that's the point of why we don't have a content based regulation we have a total restriction on good afternoon may it please the court i am william henry senior litigation counsel for the city of los vegas and i'm appearing for you simply to address the severance issue as it has to do with the it's referred to as the tabling ordinance eleven sixty eight one hundred eight and i am before you because as counsel for the government i wish to invite you to sever protection provisions of the united states constitution and since this is a city ordinance and i would be we would be asking you to strike part of it under certain circumstances i did i wouldn't precisely agree with that i think the attempt was certainly made sensitive to that notion to craft it in such a way that it referred  precisely to a holding of the united states supreme court but it is the case that that provision was added to eleven sixty eight one hundred eighty and other portions of the later in an effort to i suppose protect labor in the city of las vegas but it's also the case that the law of th circuit united states supreme court and the nevada supreme court it's pretty clear that courts thought not invalidate more of a statute than is necessary and that if one por found by the court to be constitutional and another porson not then the court has an obligation to look to severance and severance occurs and the remainder of the  statute can stand alone and accomplish the legislative purpose then it's the obligation of the court to do that and i think that remember what did the district court say in response to that argument or do you agree for example that they can solicit and if you stop people and hand out leaflets and provide information on membership as long as they don't solicit membership yes so long as they don't  in our ordinance is that as long as there isn't a solicitation for something of value then hand billing can occur so contributions is that where you draw the line ye here as far as it goes and prohibiting organizations like the a c l u from inviting people to do to support them or to join as members it's very explicit i think purpose but even if you separate if you if you severed out labor you still have the broad exceptions for free much leaks perience limited to liability company promotional  and that undermines the and you can't sever that because that would undermine the whole justification for the nagle legislation which is to give these folks a competitive advantage that they want to be able to do in gauging promotional activities that