University Can Limit Solicitations to Walkway

A Vincennes University policy restricting uninvited “solicitations” to a walkway outside the student union and banning such solicitations from the school’s library lawn does not violate the uninvited speaker’s constitutional rights.

The policy was initiated after an incident by Brother Jim in 2001 who, uninvited, began preaching on the library lawn of the public university in Indiana. The policy requires anyone soliciting on the campus to receive approval of the dean and restricts the solicitation to the walkway in front of the student union, which is a far noisier place than the library lawn. Brother Jim contended that the policy infringes on his right of free speech. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants and he appealed.

Brother Jim is not associated with any particular denomination. The appellate court said Brother Jim, whose name is James Gilles, is a traveling evangelist. “At a rock and roll concert at which the well-known Van Halen band performed, singer David Lee Roth shouted to the crowd: ‘Not even God can save your soul at a Van Halen concert!’ Gilles saw the light, called on God to save him and thus refute Roth, and was saved.”

In his lawsuit, Brother Jim argued that since Vincennes’s library lawn “is public property and is suitable for speechifying, he can no more be forbidden to preach there than he could be forbidden to preach in a public park.”

The Seventh Circuit found otherwise. “No matter how wonderfully suited the library lawn is to religious and other advocacy, Vincennes University could if it wanted bar access to the lawn to any outsider who wanted to use it for any purpose, just as it could bar outsiders from its classrooms, libraries, dining halls, and dormitories. It wouldn’t have to prove that allowing them in would disrupt its educational mission,” Judge Posner wrote. Because the university placed the lawn off limits to uninvited outsiders, it did not violate the U.S. Constitution.

However, the court found that Brother Jim came close to winning because the school’s policy as interpreted covered preaching. “To solicit, in law, as in ordinary language, is to ask someone to do something, usually of a commercial or quasi-commercial character, for the solicitor-so one solicits a prostitute for sex (or the prostitute solicits one), or solicits donations to a charity, or solicits a competitor to join in a price-fixing conspiracy. A priest who urged conversion to the Catholic Church might be thought to be engaged in solicitation, and likewise Jehovah’s Witnesses when they go door to door seeking converts. But the Pope is not soliciting when he gives a speech from the balcony of St. Peter’s, even though it is implicit or explicit in his message that the listeners should conform their behavior to the teachings of the Church. That is the character of Brother Jim’s preaching. If the Pope and Brother Jim are solicitors, almost anyone who opens his mouth to say anything is a solicitor,” the court found.

However, because the limitations on using the lawn are consistent in excluding outsiders, and because Brother Jim did not present any evidence that any uninvited outsider was allowed to speak on the lawn, he failed to meet his burden of proof on the issue.

James G. Gilles v. Bryan K. Blanchard, et al., Seventh Circuit No. 06-1441, February 14, 2007.