COLORADO SPRINGS — All forms of solicitation would be prohibited in an area of downtown Colorado Springs under a proposed city ordinance that the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado says would “surely” violate the First Amendment.
“I would advise them not to pass this severely flawed ordinance,” said Mark Silverstein, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado.
But City Attorney Chris Melcher, who presented the proposed “no solicitation zone” to the City Council on Monday, said the measure would pass legal muster. Melcher said the city borrowed language that the federal courts have deemed constitutional.
“What the downtown ‘no solicitation zone’ is seeking to do is not to prohibit content of speech but to prohibit conduct, which is to approach a person to solicit,” he said.
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