St. Louis license requirement has street performers singing the blues
The Missouri Watchdog had this article yesterday about the lawsuit challenging St. Louis’ requirement that street performers audition before a city official before they can get licenses to perform. We filed a friend of the court brief arguing that the law is unconstitutionally vague even aside from its obvious First Amendment problems. From the article:
The fee and audition ran afoul of constitutional protections for “expressive activity,” according to the ACLU’s complaint.
A second civil liberties group, the California-based Pacific Legal Foundation, joined the lawsuit this month, arguing the subjective nature of the auditions violated the right to earn an honest living.
“The audition requirement allows a government bureaucrat unlimited power to choose when to allow a person to earn a living as a street performer — without any guidelines or limits or criteria or anything,” Tim Sandefur, an attorney at PLF, told Missouri Watchdog in an email.
Read the rest…