Jehovah’s Witnesses

For Immediate Release
June 17, 2002

U.S. Supreme Court overturns ruling on permits

Today the U.S. Supreme Court, in a vote of 8 to 1, clearly reaffirmed decades of decisions that protect basic First Amendment freedoms. The Justices overturned the rulings of two Ohio courts that upheld the village requirement in Stratton, Ohio, that any person knocking at the doors of residential homes must first obtain a permit. In contrast, today’s ruling will protect the right of missionaries and any others whose cause compels them to speak to their neighbors. They can continue to do so without first obtaining a permit from local authorities.

“This ruling emphatically reaffirms the constitutional protection of Jehovah’s Witnesses to share their beliefs with others,” said attorney Paul Polidoro, who represented Jehovah’s Witnesses before the Supreme Court. He continued: “In making this decision, the court reached back to the 1930’s and 40’s when a series of landmark decisions protected the fundamental rights that most Americans consider a part of everyday life in this country. There is a long history behind the establishing of those freedoms.”

The opinion handed down from the court in part reads: “It is offensive—not only to the values protected by the First Amendment, but to the very notion of a free society—that in the context of everyday public discourse a citizen must first inform the government of her desire to speak to her neighbors and then obtain a permit to do so.”

The decision is of keen interest to Jehovah’s Witnesses, who consider it an expression of neighbor love to share information from the Bible with their neighbors. For more than 60 years, the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of their door-to-door ministry as an exercise of freedom of speech.

Contact: J. R. Brown, telephone: (718) 560-5600