Begging Is Not Speech

by Laurence M. Vance

 Begging is not speech. And neither is loitering, panhandling, soliciting, or vagrancy. Clearly, one can engage in all these acts without speaking a word.

In order to “protect” such acts under the First Amendment, however, the federal courts have classified them as forms of “speech,” but this misconstrues the nature of the First Amendment.

In 2020, Jonathan Singleton, a homeless man from Montgomery, Alabama, challenged in U.S. District Court the state’s ban on panhandling as a violation of his free speech rights. He had been cited numerous times for violating antibegging laws.

In 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama granted Singleton summary judgment and permanent injunctive relief in the case of Singleton v. Taylor. In 2025, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta sided with Singleton. In doing so, the court referenced its previous decision in a Florida case (Smith v. City of Fort Lauderdale) that “begging is speech entitled to First Amendment protection.” The petition for rehearing the case en banc was denied. Later in 2025, however, the state of Alabama appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that begging is not constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment. On March 2, 2026, the Supreme Court denied the petition for writ of certiorari.

Therefore, the ruling of the Appeals Court stands: begging is protected speech.

The First Amendment, however, reads as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Speech in any dictionary means speech. Begging is not speech. If begging can be classified as protected speech, then any act can be classified as protected speech according to the whims of whomever is on the Supreme Court at the time.

This is why in order to protect certain activities the federal courts have classified acts like flag burning as forms of speech so they could be protected by the First Amendment. And yet, on the other hand, in order to not protect certain forms of speech, the federal courts have over the years come up with a variety of speech tests — bad tendency, clear and present danger, fighting words, imminent lawless action, balancing, preferred position — to limit speech protections.

There is nothing in the First Amendment that would lead anyone to believe that something that is not speech can be classified as speech so as to be protected by the First Amendment. Clearly, it is telling that the First Amendment reads “the freedom of speech or of the press.”

Under our federal system of government, if Alabama wants to criminalize begging, loitering, panhandling, soliciting, or vagrancy, then it has every right to do so. None of these things have anything to do with freedom of speech or the First Amendment, which actually applies only to the federal government anyway. These things all concern property, not speech.

Austrian economist and libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) argued that all legitimate rights are property rights, including freedom of speech:

Freedom of speech is supposed to mean the right of everyone to say whatever he likes. But the neglected question is: where? Where does a man have this right? He certainly does not have it on property on which he is trespassing. In short, he has this right only either on his own property or on the property of someone who has agreed, as a gift or in a rental contract, to allow him on the premises. In fact, there is no such thing as a separate “right to free speech”; there is only a man’s property rights: the right to do as he wills with his own or to make voluntary agreements with other property owners.

The problem, then, is the thorny issue of what should be permitted or prohibited on public property. For example: Should sleeping, nudity, camping, drinking alcohol, using drugs, smoking, vaping, or begging be permitted or prohibited in public parks? All of these things or just some of these things? On every day or just on certain days? All the time or just during certain hours? Why or why not?

There may not be easy answers to questions like these, but two things are certain: Questions like these have nothing to do with speech and are not the concern of the federal government. The less public property there is, the fewer controversies over free speech there will be.

https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/begging-is-not-speech/