Court Opinion

ID: 9428433
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:23:47.414465+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:13.402267
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
For the reasons stated by Justice Brennan, I believe that Minnesota State Fair Rule 6.05 is unconstitutional as applied to the distribution of literature.1 I also agree, however, that the Rule is constitutional as applied to the sale of literature and the solicitation of funds. I reach this latter conclusion by a different route than does Justice Brennan for I am not persuaded that, under the Court’s precedents, the State’s interest in protecting fairgoers from fraudulent solicitation *664or sales practices justifies Rule 6.05’s restrictions of those activities.2
In Schaumburg v. Citizens for á Better Environment, 444 U. S. 620, 636-637 (1980), the Court stressed that a community’s interest in preventing fraudulent solicitations must be met by narrowly drawn regulations that do not unnecessarily interfere with First Amendment freedoms. It there held that possibility of fraud in “door-to-door” or “on-street” solicitations could be countered “by measures less intrusive than a direct prohibition on solicitation,” such as disclosure provisions and penal laws prohibiting fraudulent misrepresentations. Id., at 637-638. I see no reason why the same considerations are not applicable here. There is nothing in this record to suggest that it is more difficult to police fairgrounds for fraudulent solicitations than it is to police an entire community’s streets; just as fraudulent solicitors may “melt into a crowd” at the fair, so also may door-to-door solicitors quickly move on after consummating several transactions in a particular neighborhood. Indeed, since respondents have offered to wear identifying tags, see App. A-6, and since the fairgrounds are an enclosed area, it is at least arguable that it is easier to police the fairgrounds than a community’s streets.
Nonetheless, I believe that the State’s substantial interest in maintaining crowd control and safety on the fairgrounds does justify Rule 6.05’s restriction on solicitation and sales activities not conducted from a booth. As the Court points out, ante, at 651, “[t]he flow of the crowd and demands of *665safety are more pressing in the context of the Fair” than in the context of a typical street. While I agree with Justice Brennan that the State’s interest in order does not justify restrictions upon distribution of literature, I think that common-sense differences between literature distribution, on the one hand, and solicitation and sales, on the other, suggest that the latter activities present greater crowd control problems than the former. The distribution of literature does not require that the recipient stop in order to receive the message the speaker wishes to convey; instead, the recipient is free to read the message at a later time. For this reason, literature distribution may present even fewer crowd control problems than the oral proselytizing that the State already allows upon the fairgrounds. In contrast, as the dissent in the Minnesota Supreme Court observed, sales and the collection of solicited funds not only require the fairgoer to stop, but also “engender additional confusion . . . because they involve acts of exchanging articles for money, fumbling for and dropping money, making change, etc.” 299 N. W. 2d 79, 87 (1980). Rules restricting the exchange of money to booths have been upheld in analogous contexts, see, e. g., International Society for Krishna Consciousness of Atlanta v. Eaves, 601 F. 2d 809, 828-829 (CA5 1979) (Atlanta airports), and for similar reasons I would uphold Rule 6.05 insofar as it applies to solicitation and sales.

 Like Justice Brennan, I would not reach the question whether respondents can claim an exemption from the operation of Rule 6.05 because of their adherence to the doctrine of Sankirtan.

 It should be stressed that Rule 6.05 does not prevent respondents from wandering throughout the fairgrounds and directing interested donors or purchasers to their booth. See Brief for Petitioners 35-36. Thus, it is in fact only the exchange of money, rather than the solicitation per se of contributions or of purchases, that is limited to a booth. See 299 N. W. 2d 79, 86 (Minn. 1980) (opinion dissenting in part). Accordingly, I use the terms “solicitation” and “sales” to connote only the actual exchange of money, rather than the act of requesting that the fairgoer purchase literature or make a contribution at the booth.