Hughes v. City of Glendale
What’s at stake:
Whether the city of Glendale can outlaw panhandling using ordinances that restrict free speech in violation of the First Amendment .
Summary:
Between 2019 and 2024, homelessness in Maricopa County, Ariz., which contains more than 60% of the population of Arizona as a whole, skyrocketed by nearly 50%. The region has not built sufficient shelters to keep pace, and unsheltered homelessness has seen a particularly acute rise. Poverty is visible in much of the Valley of the Sun, and it is common to see people holding cardboard signs requesting donations at intersections and highway interchanges.
Glendale, a suburb located along the northwest border of Phoenix, contains the Valley’s largest football stadium, where the Arizona Cardinals play. In 2023, it hosted Super Bowl LVII. In anticipation of this $726 million economic boom, Glendale decided to “clean up” its streets for tourists by passing two ordinances in 2022. The Panhandling Ordinance directly bans panhandling by restricting requests for donations across the city. It bans flagging down a car to ask for a dollar but not doing the same thing to ask for directions, and it bans turning to your neighbor at the bus stop to request help with your fare but not turning to ask them for prayers. Glendale’s Panhandling Ordinance thus discriminates based on the content of speech, and it is unconstitutional.
The Street and Median Ordinance bans pedestrians on medians or in streets for any reason except to cross the road with a pedestrian signal. Because this ordinance bans speech in a public forum, it is unconstitutional unless Glendale can show that it is narrowly tailored to address a concrete safety interest—a burden the city can’t meet.
Together, the two ordinances effectively prohibit panhandling in every location in the city where a person is likely to seek a public donation, and people can be fined up to $2,500, and sentenced to jail for violating the ordinances.
The lawsuit alleges that both ordinances place blatantly unconstitutional restrictions on free speech. Plaintiffs are seeking a preliminary injunction to stop Glendale from enforcing them.
Core Legal Question:
Can cities like Glendale pass and enforce ordinances that ban panhandling, even if the Supreme Court has already ruled that laws like these violate people’s First Amendment right to free speech?