From the Legal Hotline (1-877-NEWS-LAW)

Q. Our paper’s periodical permit was revoked by the post office last year. Do you know if we still need it for the legal ads?

A. You can qualify to run legal ads using the audited threshold audience number in place of the permit. Otherwise, the paper will need a permit.

Q. Can you send me some points to push back against our city, which is considering using the county website to run ads? Also, I need the latest polling from Mason-Dixon.

A. Here is the FPA flyer with some bullet points and talking points for a recent county commission meeting. Keep in mind that people rarely go looking for public notices; they come across them while they’re looking at something else. To the extent people do go looking for them, floridapublicnotices.com is a repository for all legal notices in the state, if they run in a newspaper. Notices posted to the county website will no longer appear on floridapublicnotices.com. Further, polling shows how unpopular the website notice is to the public. The latest Mason-Dixon poll conducted in March 2025 found 92% of Floridians believe public notices should be published in print newspapers and on floridapublicnotices.com.

Q. Do you know what the reprint policy is for articles from Politico? I have tried to figure it out, and they refer you to a site, Copyright Clearance Center, and from there I get lost. I was looking at reprinting a piece from 2024 regarding Florida’s road safety supervision.

A. CCC licenses copyright-protected content to businesses and academic institutions and compensates publishers and content creators for the use of their works. It passes most of its revenues to publishers in the form of royalty payments to rightholders, and the rest is kept as a fee for its services.
It looks like the reprinting of POLITICO content “in bulk” would require such a license from CCC or some type of authorization from POLITICO. There are “fair use” exceptions that allow use for news reporting, but the exception is fairly vague. Some companies buy the license because they copy and distribute material internally. I’m not sure if this works for a one-time license.

Q. We hoped to quickly get your opinion about a new ordinance restricting delivery that our country is proposing and has on its agenda. It basically states that we would have to hand the paper to someone or hang it on a door. I’m sure you’ve seen many of these over the years, so we were hoping to get your thoughts about whether this ordinance holds water and what legal recourse we might have if they follow through. I’ve attached the proposed ordinance and the Business Impact Estimate, which states the ordinance would have a negligible compliance cost on businesses. I believe that to be untrue in our case. Thank you for any help or insight you can provide. We always appreciate your help.

A. This is a great question that requires a detailed answer.

As noted in the county’s Business Impact Statement, newspaper publishers have a First Amendment right to distribute their product to the public, whether solicited or unsolicited.
Indeed, liberty of circulation is essential as the liberty of publishing because without circulation, the publication would be of little value. 98 U.S. 727.
On the other hand, governments may impose reasonable restrictions on the time, place or manner of such distribution. However, the government needs to be very careful in regulating this area. The general rule is that while the government can impose reasonable restrictions in furtherance of a significant government interest (e.g., cleaning up litter), a regulation or the way it is interpreted must be narrowly tailored to serve that interest and must leave open ample alternative channels of communication. A regulation or interpretation is narrowly tailored “when it does not burden substantially more speech than is necessary to further the government’s legitimate interests.” Hays County Guardian v. Supple, Fifth Cir. Ct of Appeals.
In this case, while the ordinance preamble recognizes the right to “distribute unsolicited newspapers, handbills, advertisements, etc.,” the ordinance then bans these materials if “distributed, thrown, deposited, etc., on any yard, driveway, porch, etc. “ The only exception is that they may be “handed to any person or hung on any handle or knob of any door.” The county claims this approach is “narrowly tailored” to address problems with “litter,” “clogging of storm drains”.
However, the county’s ordinance does not appear to be narrow in that it bans a substantial amount of speech that residents may want to hear and fails to connect the ban with problems with refuse. “One person’s litter is another person’s literature.” 254 N.J. Sup. 166.

Rather, the ordinance seems overly broad for two reasons–

First, requiring that material like newspapers be wrapped and placed on the door imposes substantial costs on an important means of communication. Further, requiring “handing the paper over” is like requiring prior consent in order to distribute, which cases have said is overly restrictive. The decisions say delivery of unordered/unsolicited publication does not constitute litter until it is done over the prior objection of the resident.

Second, the county has ways to prevent litter caused by the home delivery of papers without unreasonably infringing on freedom of speech or the press. For example, the county could require the publisher to retrieve papers that residents do not pick up in a timely manner or require the publisher to maintain a stop-distribution list for residents requesting that option. The publisher can honor such requests to avoid a littering charge, but still deliver to other homeowners. Other local governments have adopted this approach to banning the distribution of unsolicited materials if the owner has “notified” the distributor that the owner does not want it via posting, email to the distributor, or filing a refusal on the city website.

Overall, the ordinance shuts down a lot of newspaper (and other) speech (via penalties and fines) in pursuing the goal of cleaning up litter.

There are many cases that illustrate how courts will analyze ordinances like this one. For example, a Supreme Court of Georgia case, Statesboro Publishing Co. v. City of Sylvania (1999) dealt with a similar ordinance that prohibited distribution within the City “any handbill or printed or written material” placed in yards, driveway or porches but exempted paid-for and free materials handed to a willing recipient or by using doorknob or mailbox hanging devices. The Court struck down the ordinance, based on the above reasons.
Finally, while the county says the ordinance is content-neutral, it specifically carves out exemptions based on the author of certain materials and unsolicited (paid-for) materials. Thus, it is questionable whether the law meets this requirement

See page 28 of the attached NAA manual. The case law in support of free delivery is cited. Also see the story about a recent New York case at this link– https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/politics/albany/2018/05/09/free-newspaper-your-lawn-littering-court-rules-new-york-case/594514002/
I think all these citations will support a legitimate challenge to the ordinance.