Reid v. Borough of Brookville, Pa.
| Decision Date | 02 May 1941 |
| Docket Number | No. 1183.,1183. |
| Citation | 39 F. Supp. 30 |
| Parties | REID et al. v. BOROUGH OF BROOKVILLE, PA., et al. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Pennsylvania |
Theodore Epstein, of Pittsburgh, Pa., for plaintiffs.
Arnold & Chaplin, of Clearfield, Pa., and Vincent R. Smith and Robert Engel, both of Greensburg, Pa., for defendants.
The plaintiffs are members of a cult known as "Jehovah's witnesses", and the defendants are boroughs of the Western District of Pennsylvania and their officers.
The only ground common to the defendant boroughs is that each has in force an ordinance which requires a license from a borough authority to each person selling or distributing merchandise, including books and periodicals, upon the streets or from door to door. The ordinance of the Borough of Monessen differs from the other ordinances in that it is directed against disloyal persons and those who have refused to salute the American flag, and asserts as one of the requirements for a license that the applicant salute the flag. Although joined together as defendants, the cases of the various boroughs were tried separately.
The facts in each case were substantially parallel. Members of "Jehovah's witnesses" had been arrested in the past in each borough, and the officers of the borough have declared their intention to pursue the same policy in the future if the "Witnesses" functioned as in the past without first securing the license contemplated by the ordinance. On behalf of plaintiffs it is claimed that the application of the ordinances to "Jehovah's witnesses" and their activities encroaches upon the civil and constitutional rights of such witnesses. The rights so attacked, they say, are those of freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom of press and of assemblage.
Each of "Jehovah's witnesses" asserts that he is an ordained minister. The method of his ordination is not very plain, but the evidence of it is found in a small printed card which bears his name in typewriting at the top and the printed signature of the "Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society, J. F. Rutherford President". This card asserts in part:
The function of each Witness as such ordained minister is to sell or distribute the periodicals or tracts put forth by the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society upon the street or by a house-to-house canvass. In this distribution religion as practiced and advocated by organized church bodies is denounced as a "snare and a racket" — this being in accordance with the declarations of the Watch Tower publications. A housewife, called from her cooking breakfast to listen to pointed criticisms of her religion by a persistent book agent, is quite likely to regard the agent as a nuisance, even though the agent sincerely believes that he is but fulfilling his duty to Jehovah by his attempted sale and advocacy. And the ordinary citizen is apt to be indignant and regard a Jehovah's witness as disloyal when the latter refuses to salute the national flag, or to allow his children in school to salute it, even though the Witness may be acting pursuant to a religious scruple.
Practices such as those...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Jones v. City of Opelika Bowden v. City of Fort Smith, Ark Jobin v. State of Arizona 966
...1352. Other states required oaths before one could preach which many ministers could not conscientiously take.19 Cf. Reid v. Borough of Brookville, Pa., D.C., 39 F.Supp. 30; Kennedy v. City of Moscow, D.C., 39 F.Supp. 26. Research reveals no attempt to control or persecute by the more subtl......
-
Douglas v. City of Jeannette
...for the determination of a constitutional question, as the learned court below apparently conceived (see reference to Reid v. Brookville, D.C.W.D.Pa., 39 F.Supp. 30, 32). Actual experience shows that the convenience of obtaining a final decision of a constitutional question is equally as gr......
-
Kenyon v. City of Chicopee
...D.C., 25 F.Supp. 127, same case on appeal, Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization, 3 Cir., 101 F.2d 774,Reid v. Borough of Brookville, D.C., 39 F.Supp. 30, 32, and Beeler v. Smith, D.C., 40 F.Supp. 139. See West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 63 S.Ct. 1......
-
Denton v. City of Carrollton, Georgia
...105, 63 S.Ct. 891, 87 L.Ed. 1292. 14 Douglas v. City of Jeannette, D.C.W.D. Pa.1941, 39 F.Supp. 32, and cf. Reid v. Borough of Brookville, Pa., D.C.W.D. Pa.1941, 39 F.Supp. 30. 15 1942, 130 F.2d 652. 16 318 U.S. 749, 63 S.Ct. 660, 87 L.Ed. 1125. 17 Douglas v. City of Jeannette, 1943, 319 U.......