An ugly trend is developing in Colorado communities—a series of panhandling or no-solicitation ordinances designed to silence the poor and homeless and push them into other communities. Despite a victory by the ACLU of Colorado against one of these ordinances in Colorado Springs last year, new attempts have popped up in locations such as Grand Junction, Boulder, Pueblo, and Centennial.
Panhandling bans are often proposed under the guise of public safety, but the ACLU does not oppose legitimate public safety laws curtailing aggressive or threatening behavior. The real intent of these ordinances generally goes much further, hoping to push the homeless from view and hide uncomfortable reminders of extreme poverty in our communities.
The poor are often the first to lose civil liberties, but the Supreme Court has upheld requests for charity as a form of speech, and people do not lose their rights of free speech because they are homeless or poor. It is simply unconstitutional to single out groups of people we don’t like and deny their right to hold a sign quietly or ask for help peaceably.
Often, in an attempt to appear even-handed, these bans are written in a way that would apply to street musicians and Salvation Army bell-ringers, newspaper hawkers and Girl Scout cookie-sellers, advertisers and fund raisers, and sometimes protestors, petition-gatherers or advocates of all kinds. Quickly, it becomes apparent how problematic these ordinances really are.
We should remember that the intended targets of these ordinances, the homeless, are real people with real needs. Among them are veterans and mothers with children, people seeking jobs, people with disabilities or needing mental health care, and people who lost a place to live through bank foreclosure or the Colorado floods last September. Trying to push the homeless out of one location only increases the problem of homelessness in other locations. Far better to face the real issues and address real needs.
The ACLU of Colorado will continue to uphold rights of free speech and other civil liberties for all people in Colorado, including the poor, the homeless, and those targeted as undesirable by communities wishing they would just go somewhere else.

It’s really quite simple.  Religious liberty means the freedom to believe what you believe, to state or even argue your beliefs in public if you wish, to gather in religious community, to worship as you choose, and to live your own personal life according to your religious faith or perspective.  Religious liberty does not and cannot mean the freedom to violate the rights or freedoms of others, to discriminate or violate public accommodation laws when serving the public, or to impose your religious practices and restrictions on employees, students or customers who may not share your religion.
Fortunately, the Governor of Arizona just vetoed a noxious bill that would have allowed many kinds of public discrimination in the name of religious freedom.  Unfortunately, the idea that religious freedom should allow discrimination and override public accommodation laws has been popping up in many places, including here in Colorado.  The ACLU of Colorado recently won summary judgment against a bakery that refused to make a cake for a same-sex couple in violation of long-standing public accommodation laws.  These laws are essential for equal protection in public commerce, preventing a chaotic breakdown of civility in a society with many different religious beliefs and personal biases.
The ACLU of Colorado upholds true religious liberty for all people and First Amendment principles of both free exercise of religion and non-establishment of religion in the public sphere.  If a bakery or other retail outlet refused to serve someone because of their religious beliefs, including the beliefs of any Christian tradition, we would fight that discrimination, too.  Ironically, the bill just vetoed in Arizona might have allowed exactly that kind of discrimination to occur.  It will be essential to remain vigilant against attempts to justify acts of discrimination against LGBT persons or anyone else in the name of religious liberty.