Recycle for Change v. City of Oakland, No. 16-15295 (9th Cir. 2017)
Annotate this CaseThe Ninth Circuit affirmed the denial of preliminary injunctive relief, holding that RFC was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its First Amendment claim challenging the City of Oakland's ordinance regulating unattended donation collection boxes (UDCBs) because the ordinance was content neutral and survived intermediate scrutiny. Assuming that charitable solicitations are protected speech, the Ordinance was content neutral to the extent it regulated speech or expressive activity at all. The Ninth Circuit concluded that the Ordinance plainly served important governmental interests unrelated to the suppression of protected speech; was sufficiently narrowly tailored and left alternative avenues of communication for RFC to express its message; and, because RFC did not demonstrate that it was likely to succeed on the merits of its First Amendment claim, the court need not address RFC's irreparable harm argument.
Court Description: Civil Rights. The panel affirmed the denial of preliminary injunctive relief in an action brought by Recycle for Change, a California non-profit corporation, alleging that the City of Oakland’s ordinance regulating unattended donation collection boxes was inconsistent with the First Amendment. The panel held that assuming that unattended donation collection boxes constituted protected speech or expressive conduct—an issue the panel did not decide—the plaintiff was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its First Amendment claim. The panel held that because the Ordinance does not, by its terms, discriminate on the basis of content, and there was no evidence that Oakland enacted the Ordinance with an intent to burden plaintiff’s message of charitable solicitation or out of any disagreement with that message, the Ordinance was content neutral. Applying intermediate scrutiny, the panel held that the Ordinance plainly served important governmental interests unrelated to the suppression of protected speech. Additionally, the Ordinance was sufficiently narrowly tailored and left alternative avenues of communication for plaintiff to express its message. RECYCLE FOR CHANGE V. CITY OF OAKLAND 3
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