Ronald Galman, 30, panhandles at the Fremont Street Experience on Friday. Officials with the ACLU said a new ruling allows panhandlers to beg, escort services to hand out ads and anyone with a message to set up a booth at the downtown pedestrian mall. Photo by Isaac Brekken/Review-Journal

Two Las Vegas ordinances designed to protect Fremont Street Experience tourists from solicitors unconstitutionally restrict free speech, according to a ruling handed down Friday by the U.S. Ninth District Court of Appeals.

The appeals court overturned an earlier District Court ruling that the city's ordinances prohibiting soliciting and setting up tables and booths at the Fremont Street Experience were constitutional.

Allen Lichtenstein, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the Ninth Circuit's ruling Friday wipes out a series of ordinances the city has passed since 1997. As a result of the opinion, he said, panhandlers are permitted to beg for money, escort services can hand out cards picturing scantily dressed women and any individual with a message is allowed to erect a booth.

"What is allowed on Fremont Street is the same that is allowed on any other street," Lichtenstein said. "Special rules for Fremont Street will not apply. It is what it is, just another sidewalk."

A key issue in the case between the city of Las Vegas and the ACLU was whether the five-block downtown attraction is public property, despite a multimillion-dollar overhaul and creation of a private company to oversee it.

"The Fremont Street Experience unmistakably possesses the characteristics of a traditional public forum," the panel of three circuit judges ruled.

The court's opinion said the city's ordinances prohibiting solicitors were unconstitutional. Its law regarding setting up booths or tables is constitutional, but the manner in which the city enforced it was not, the court ruled.

The city must allow booths for organizations to disseminate their message. What is not allowed are booths used to sell items with no message attached, such as ice cream cones, Lichtenstein said.

The city had prohibited anyone from setting up a table or booth.

"This statute (dealing with setting up tables), if applied to non-First Amendment activity, is constitutional," Lichtenstein said.

The $70 million Fremont Street Experience was built in 1995 to revitalize a downtown area that was overcome with blight, making it far less attractive to tourists than the Strip.

The area was viewed as "sleazy and unsafe," judges wrote in the ruling.

The city adopted the ordinances at issue in the case during the revitalization effort, aiming to keep solicitors from pestering tourists at the pedestrian mall.

"Solicitation activities in the (Fremont Street Experience) mall would disrupt the comfortable environment that is sought to be maintained for its patrons," the court ruling says in summarizing the city's reasons for passing the laws. "Without visitors, the city's purpose in creating the mall to revitalize the downtown business area would be compromised and the mall itself would be in jeopardy economically."

In the city's ordinance, solicitation is defined as "to ask, beg, solicit or plead, whether orally, or in a written or printed manner, for the purpose of obtaining money, charity, business or patronage, or gifts or items of value for oneself or another person or organization."

The ACLU has picked apart the city's ordinance over the past decade. It has successfully argued its cases before the Ninth District Court of Appeals three times.

Previously, the ACLU successfully convinced the Ninth Circuit that elements in the ordinance banning the distribution of leaflets and vending were unconstitutional.

In June, attorneys with the city and the ACLU argued before the Ninth Circuit over portions of the ordinance addressing solicitation and the right to set up booths on Fremont Street.

"As far as I'm concerned, this would end it, and we are very happy about that," Lichtenstein said. "It's been a long battle, but it's been worth it for the public to be able to reclaim its streets and sidewalks."

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and City Attorney Brad Jerbic had not seen the ruling Friday and said they could not comment.

Deputy City Attorney Bill Henry, who argued the case on behalf of the city, did not return phone calls Friday.

Gary Peck, the executive director of the ACLU of Nevada, applauded the court's ruling.

"It would have been difficult for the victory to have been more complete or more unequivocal than it was," Peck said. "Everyone who cares about free speech should be applauding this ruling."

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, said his interpretation of the Ninth Circuit's opinion was that the city's ordinance was too broad.

"It's conceivable the city could draw an ordinance, and if it was sufficiently narrow, it could withstand constitutional muster," said Tobias, a former UNLV professor. For example, if city officials believed panhandlers threatened the public's safety, it could draw up an ordinance specific to that concern.

Tobias said the three judges who sat on the panel are Democratic appointees. The judges presiding over the case were A. Wallace Tashima, Sidney R. Thomas and Richard A. Paez.

The city could ask for the entire panel to hear the case and perhaps see a different outcome, Tobias said.

The court's opinion acknowledged that cities across the country try to restrict certain activities that can be viewed as nuisances in newly renovated areas. The city of Las Vegas was not alone in trying to protect areas popular with tourists.

"If this trend of privatization continues -- and we have no reason to doubt that it will -- citizens will find it increasingly difficult to exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech, as the fora where expressive activities are protected dwindle," the ruling says.

The Ninth Circuit ruling on Fremont Street could set a precedent for other cities with revitalization projects under way.

"A lot of cities are doing similar things," Tobias said. "It does strike me that this reaches beyond Las Vegas. I think it (the opinion) will carry."