The city of Dallas is facing a lawsuit over an ordinance approved earlier this year that bans standing in the median of a roadway. The ordinance allows city marshals to issue tickets to people standing in the median or in the road.
Some members of the city council who supported the regulation described it as a way to reduce the risk of auto-pedestrian incidents.
"The city's own data demonstrates that...that justification doesn't pass constitutional muster or even the smell test," attorney Travis Fife with the Texas Civil Rights Project said. "This is a targeted attack on poor people who use medians and areas adjacent to the street to ask for help for their basic survival."
Fife noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has determined that the First Amendment covers charitable appeals for funds in public, and that ordinances similar to the one in Dallas that were passed by Oklahoma City and Albuquerque have been overturned.
"This is an attack on Dallas' most vulnerable residents - the homeless. In trying to sweep these people off the streets, they have severely restricted everyone in Dallas' First Amendment rights," Fife said.
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