Should a Christian be allowed to share their faith in a public shopping center?

That’s the question before the court in Bakersfield, California in a case against Valley Plaza Mall.

 Attorneys for Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) represent Debra Moore, a senior citizen who is a Christian. Mrs. Moore likes to invite people to her church and share free gospel tracts in public places. Last August, she handed out a few of the tracts at Valley Plaza Mall when she was approached by mall security and management.

She was not selling anything or asking for donations and yet she was accused of “soliciting.” Mall officials gave her a retailer application and told that she must submit the application and pay a fee of approximately $250 each time she wanted to hand out a tract. 

The application demanded information not relevant to Moore, such as business plan, revenue, and other financial information.    

Attorneys for the PJI got involved but the mall wouldn’t budge. The mall claims the right to arrest anyone who violates its “code of conduct.”

Matthew McReynolds, a Senior Staff Attorney for PJI who filed the suit this week, noted, “The mall’s position is that free speech is only free when it’s spoken, not written, and when the mall thinks it is ‘pleasant’ speech. Those restrictions are fundamentally incompatible with the California Constitution.”

Unlike most states, the free speech provision of the California Constitution has been interpreted for decades to extend speech rights to large shopping malls.

Brad Dacus, president of PJI, said, “In America, people should not have to get permission or pay a fee simply for sharing their faith in legally protected areas. In the past three years, we’ve seen an alarming uptick in the number of evangelists being criminally prosecuted or otherwise barred from engaging in the time-honored American tradition of publicly sharing their faith. We’re also very concerned about the increasing number of incidents where not even senior citizens like Ms. Moore are being respected in their exercise of constitutional freedoms.” 

Let’s hope she wins her case.