No person shall deposit or deliver any paper, circular or printed material of any kind at any residence within the Borough of Manasquan, except upon the expressed request and order of the owner or occupant of any such residence.
Any municipality may make, amend, repeal and enforce such other ordinances, regulations, rules and by-laws not contrary to the laws of this state or of the United States, as it may deem necessary and proper for the good government, order and protection of persons and property, and for the preservation of the public health, safety and welfare of the municipality and its inhabitants, and as may be necessary to carry into effect the powers and duties conferred and imposed by this subtitle, or by any law.
In passing upon the validity of the ordinance the role of the courts is tightly circumscribed. (Cit. omit.) There is a presumption that the municipal governing body acted reasonably and that the resulting legislation is valid. (Cit. omit.) We may not pass upon the wisdom of a particular ordinance, and debatable issues or questions of policy involved in its passage must be resolved in favor of **722 the municipality. (Cit. omit.) We are not free to compare the views of the municipal governing body with our own and from this to determine what policy would be in the best interest of the community's residents. The wisdom of the course chosen by the governing body, as distinguished from its legality, is reviewable only at the polls. * * * (at 519, 264 A.2d at 79)
* * * (A)ny attempt to restrict those liberties must be justified by clear public interest, threatened not doubtfully or remotely, but by clear and present danger. The rational connection between the remedy provided and the evil to be curbed, which in other contexts might support legislation against attack on due process grounds, will not suffice. (Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 530, 65 S.Ct. 315, 322, 89 L.Ed. 430 (1945))
Freedom to distribute information to every citizen wherever he desires to receive it is so clearly vital to the preservation of a free society that, putting aside reasonable police and health regulations of *183 time and manner of distribution, it must be fully preserved. The dangers of distribution can so easily be controlled by traditional legal methods, leaving to each householder the full right to decide whether he will receive strangers as visitors, that stringent prohibition can serve no purpose but that forbidden by the Constitution, the naked restriction of the dissemination of ideas. (at 146—147, 63 S.Ct. at 865)
It is unlawful for any person distributing handbills, circulars or other advertisements to ring the door bell, sound the door knocker, or otherwise summon the inmate or inmates of any residence to the door for the purpose of receiving such handbills, circulars or other advertisements they or any person with them may be distributing.
We are faced in the instant case with the necessity of weighing the conflicting interests of the appellant in the civil rights she claims, as well as the right of the individual householder to determine whether he is willing to receive her message, against the interest of the community which by this ordinance offers to protect the interest of all of its citizens, whether particular citizens want that protection or not. The ordinance does not control anything but the distribution of literature, and in that respect it substitutes the judgment of the community for the judgment of the individual householder. It submits the distributor to criminal punishment for annoying the person on whom he calls, even though the recepient of the literature distributed is in fact glad to receive it. * * * (at 143—144, 63 S.Ct. at 863)
Section 4. No person may throw, cast, distribute, scatter, deposit, pass out, give away, circulate or deliver any handbill, dodger, circular, newspapers, paper, booklet, poster, or other printed matter or advertising literature of any kind in the yard or grounds of any house, building structure, on any porch, doorstep or vestibule, in any public hallway, or upon any vacant lot or other private property without having first obtained permission of the owner or of an adult resident or occupant thereof.
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