Justices Let Big Apple Ban Subway Begging : Supreme Court: The law doesn’t violate free-speech rights. The case is not expected to have national impact.

The Supreme Court today let stand New York City’s ban on poor and homeless people begging for money in the city’s subways.

The justices, without comment, rejected arguments that the city’s ban on “begging and panhandling” throughout the subway system violates free-speech rights.

Today’s action carries no direct impact for other cities with similar policies. The action, merely a denial of review, sets no national legal precedent.

The high court in 1980 ruled that the free-speech protections of the Constitution’s First Amendment extend to people who go door to door soliciting money for charities.

But the justices never have ruled that soliciting for one’s own needs is constitutionally protected.

That is just what a federal judge in New York ruled last January. U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand struck down the ban imposed by the city’s transit authority. “While often disturbing and sometimes alarmingly graphic, begging is unmistakably informative and persuasive speech,” he ruled.

Sand said the transit authority could limit where and when begging is allowed and regulate beggars’ conduct, but could not impose a flat ban.

Referring to the Supreme Court’s 1980 ruling, Sand said, “A meaningful distinction cannot be drawn for First Amendment purposes between solicitations for charity and begging.”

The city’s subway system does not ban solicitation for charitable, religious or political causes.

The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Sand’s ruling by a 2-1 vote in May and reinstated the ban on begging.

“Even if begging and panhandling constitute protected expressive conduct, which is in serious doubt, we hold that the regulation at issue . . . is not in violation of the First Amendment,” the appeals court wrote.

The appeals court said Sand’s ruling “reflects an exacerbated deference to the alleged individual rights of beggars and panhandlers to the great detriment of the common good.”

The appeals court pointed to evidence that subway passengers find begging, unlike soliciting by organized charities, to be intimidating and threatening. “The difference must be examined not from the imaginary heights of Mt. Olympus but from the very real context of the New York City subway,” it said.

In other action today, the court:

* Let stand a ruling that state officials may be sued for shutting down a day-care center without giving the owner a chance to respond to charges of child abuse and overcrowding.

The court, without comment, rejected an appeal by Arizona officials seeking immunity from a lawsuit by a Tucson day-care center.

*Turned down a bid by the nation’s nuclear power industry to scuttle anticipated federal rules for the training of nuclear plant workers.