Communities crack down on door-to-door solicitors

Girl Scouts selling cookies, children trick-or-treating and groups singing Christmas carols are typically welcome at one’s doorstep – pushy salesmen are not. Nor should they be.

Solicitors going door-to-door may face a series of security crackdowns enforced by neighborhoods across the country. New community ordinances may be the most effective way to deal with those difficult, unwanted visitors.

According to USA Today, communities are implementing ordinances that would make people collecting donations and selling products go through background checks, have licenses or wear photo name tags. Read full article here.

Having these extra precautions weeds out the frauds and ensures that the solicitors are really who they say they are. It would protect residents from giving their money away to con artists.

Residents may also be able to join “Do not knock” lists or put up “No Soliciting” signs to keep salesmen at bay. The article said if solicitors ignore the rules and the signs, they will have to pay fines from $500-$1,000.

However, most religious, political, charity and children’s groups will still be allowed to go door-to-door.

The USA Today article reported the aggressive move to limit solicitors’ abilities was caused by the growing number of resident complaints about pushy salesmen. Mayor Tom Strickland of Machesney Park, Illinois, blamed the economy for the flood of out-of-state salespeople.

Strickland said he would rather see all solicitors banned from canvassing neighborhoods, but was concerned about lawsuits.

Dan Kobil, a constitutional law professor at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio, agrees. He said the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “going door-to-door to communicate a message” is a First Amendment right and anti-solicitation rules that “try to license speech are inherently suspect under our Constitution.” Kobil said he even sued communities for restricting Ohio Citizen Action, a consumer advocacy group, from making door-to-door visits.

Even though people have a right to knock on doors to share a message as the Supreme Court said, the residents have a right to put up “No Solicitation” signs in their yards. It goes both ways. Sometimes the salesmen are overly aggressive, rude and deceitful so people should be allowed some kind of protection.

In the Colebrookdale Township in Pennsylvania, Cindy Conrad, township manager, said rules were enforced when a Utah alarm system sales crew “kind of [forced] their way into people’s homes. Now, solicitors have to get licenses from the police, who also can perform background checks.

In the article, Strickland called on Congress to take action, saying “Our national laws need to do something about this.”

Having individual communities and cities decide on anti-solicitation measures is a promising start. It’s just like people getting caller ID to avoid sales calls or downloading spam filters to eliminate junk emails. There is no way to get rid of every annoying sales pitch we come across. It would also be challenging to write an anti-solicitation law that most solicitors and residents will agree to. It may infringe on people’s rights; some people may accept one group of solicitors and refuse another.

Let’s leave it to City Councils and neighborhoods to decide how they want to treat traveling salesmen.