ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 St. Johns County stopped enforcing its anti-panhandling ordinance early last year, but now the county has agreed to make that enforcement pause permanent.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the result of a settlement reached late last month between the county and three local residents who had been warned, fined and even arrested for violating the panhandling ban.<\/p>\n
Ray Taseff, Senior Attorney with the Florida Justice Institute, helped litigate the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean the law is really on our side and I think that reflects a couple things. I think it reflects the fact that we live in a very special place because of the First Amendment,\u201d Taseff said.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n The ordinance<\/a> prohibited people from physically interacting with the occupants of vehicles on roadways and made it illegal to stand on medians for extended periods of time.<\/p>\n The restrictions are nearly identical to those found in Jacksonville\u2019s anti-panhandling ordinance<\/a>, which was passed in 2022.<\/p>\n Despite the St. Johns settlement occurring in the same federal court district that encompasses Jacksonville, Taseff explained that, because there was no final judgment, the outcome doesn\u2019t automatically block Jacksonville\u2019s ordinance.<\/p>\n According to JSO, the Jacksonville ordinance is active and \u201cthe Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office would enforce violations when applicable\u201d.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: <\/b>Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n Taseff\u2019s organization also sued, challenging Jacksonville\u2019s ordinance back in 2024, but allowed the case to be dismissed due to external issues not related to the merits of the case.<\/p>\n He said while there are not active plans to refile a challenge in Jacksonville specifically, the St. Johns outcome could inspire a new challenge in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cGovernment can\u2019t target a specific type of speech or a particular type of request,\u201d Taseff said. \u201dIf a politician stands along the roadway and asks for a vote, that\u2019s legal. If a poor person stands in the same place and asks for charity, that can\u2019t be made a crime as it has in many, many jurisdictions.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to the victory in St. Johns, similar anti-panhandling ordinances have been successfully challenged in at least eleven other municipalities throughout Florida in recent years, including Columbia County and Lake City in our region.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: <\/b>Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/b><\/a>] <\/b><\/p>\n Click here<\/b><\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/b><\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 St. Johns County stopped enforcing its anti-panhandling ordinance early last year, but now…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":583582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5136],"tags":[61783,12189,5229,13816,124993,252929,17998,3188,723,252927,124994,11561,46580,13819,7310,13035,3005,48908,48916,2581,8423,252928,248623,425,252926,35551,119915,10622,290,28496,156557,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-583581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-61783","tag-action_news","tag-america","tag-ben_becker","tag-cbs_47","tag-columbia_county","tag-duval","tag-fl","tag-florida","tag-florida_justice_institute","tag-fox_30","tag-jack","tag-jacks","tag-jackson","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville_sheriffs_office","tag-jake","tag-jake_stoan","tag-jake_stowan","tag-john","tag-jso","tag-lake_city","tag-live_downtown","tag-local","tag-ray_tassi","tag-saint","tag-saint_johns_county","tag-st","tag-state","tag-tanika_hughes","tag-tessa","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}