Door-to-door salesmen are fighting back after many Utah cities told them to get off the front porch.
With "do-not-knock" lists multiplying across the state and a growing number of laws restricting door-to-door sales, cities have tried repeatedly to shut out solicitors along the Wasatch Front.
But now, a Davis County attorney is trying to pry open the door.
Craig Taylor is taking solicitation restrictions to court on behalf of cleaning product company Kirby of Utah and Idaho and several other distributors. Taylor has filed lawsuits against 25 Utah cities and counties including Salt Lake and Utah counties. Cities under fire for curbing solicitors' rights span from Logan to Sandy, and even to St. George.
"The lawsuits are an assertion of our clients' First Amendment commercial speech rights that are being overly burdened by oppressive ordinances by the cities," Taylor said. "It's just an attempt to keep out door-to-door soliciting."
Though the ordinances vary between cities, Taylor said the most common restriction is making salesmen undergo lengthy federal background checks and get a city license to pitch their product door to door. That license usually carries a fee, Taylor said, which could be the death blow to vendors relying on daily sales for a living.
"It would cost one solicitor over $43,000 a year to get licenses in every city from Logan to Spanish Fork," Taylor said. "I mean, come on, it's impossible. Our people can't do that."
Some cities like Draper have even started citywide do-not-knock lists where residents can sign up to blacklist solicitors from their property.
Draper's list, instituted only a month ago, already has 400 residents on it who can now report solicitors as trespassers to the police department. Draper's new ordinance also requires solicitors to be city licensed, but is actually a less restrictive version of the city's previous law that essentially banned door-to-door sales.
Eric Keck, Draper city manager, said the new rules give residents control over who can knock on their front door.
"It's nothing against these people's lifestyle, but we find there are a number of scams going on by the door-to-door people," Keck said. "They gave the whole soliciting industry a black eye."
Draper resident Jeff Hodges works from his home, where he is usually interrupted by salesmen two or three times a day. Many of those peddlers, he said, are often aggressive, refusing to take no for an answer. One company has even tried several times to trick Hodges by saying his wife hired them to clean the house.
"They're just really nasty and rude," Hodges said. "I understand this is a form of living, but if I say I don't want to be bothered and I'm not interested, that should be sufficient."
Since Draper started its do-not-knock list last month, Hodges said he has seen a noticeable drop in salespeople combing his South Mountain neighborhood. Though Hodges added that he sympathizes with vendors' commercial speech rights, his right to privacy trumps them.
"It's my property. It's my doorway. It's my dollar, and it's my time," Hodges said. "There's no reason to assume that I need to purchase laundry detergent from my front door."
But Taylor said cities are casting too broad a net by restricting all door-to-door sales because of a few tactless salesmen and scam artists. A do-not-knock list and mandatory city licenses curtail rights of legitimate salesmen without protecting residents against fraudulent vendors, he said.
"If you've got a serial rapist who wants to do harm, he's not going to go in and register with the city," Taylor said. "You can't always eliminate every conceivable problem. You'd have to totally trample people's constitutional rights to have a perfect situation."
The proliferation of new anti-solicitation laws in Utah is already tossing some of those rights by the wayside, he said. A fair solution, Taylor said, would be to allow residents to individually post "no soliciting" signs on their front doors.
"It's ironic that Utah, which sends so many of its young people out to knock on doors in the world as missionaries, would have such a skittish response to receiving door-to-door solicitation," he said.
E-mail: estewart@desnews.com