Legal News

Philadelphia Freedom? Not For Us, Say Tour Guides

By Ashby Jones

We found ourselves smiling repeatedly while reading Barry Newman’s page-one story in the WSJ today on the angry tour guides of Philadelphia. The lead alone left us grinning:

PHILADELPHIA — When in the course of human events, some tour guides are caught saying things like “Ben Franklin had 80 illegitimate children,” the City Council shall force every tour guide in town to take a history test. Whereupon, some of the guides will pursue the blessings of free speech. In court.

What’s liable to get lost within the colorful tale is the fascinating stuff about the actual lawsuit, filed by tour guide Ann Boulais and two other guides, against the city of Philadelphia. Click here for the complaint.

The backstory: A year ago, the City of Brotherly Love made it illegal to talk about history for money in the city center without a license. Boulais and two fellow guides sued, claiming the rule violated their First Amendment rights.

In order to get a license, guides have to know the answers to 65% of 150 questions about the city’s historic sites. The city calls its law “an economic regulation” that has only an “incidental effect on speech.” It notes that New York and Washington have similar rules. The guides point out that Boston, has no such law, and note that speech is anything but “incidental” to a guided tour.

“America,” says Mike Tait, a tour guide and one of the plaintiffs, “was founded by people who stood up and said to the king of England, ‘What you’re doing isn’t fair.’ That’s pretty much the same thing here.”

That said, Philadelphia says in its court briefs that it has a right to protect its visitors from “a great proliferation of misinformation” — misinformation spread, Philly says, by many of its tour guides.

With the trial date due to be set on April 7, First Amendment experts can’t call the outcome. “There’s no apparatus for judges to figure out what they’re doing in this area,” says Prof. Robert Post of Yale Law School.

Maybe not, but for our money, Robert McNamara, a lawyer who took on the case, got out one of the better lines in the “Government can’t make sure you understand the Constitution before it has to abide by it.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 30, 2009 (boomark / email).