Both parties cite a 70-year-old decision from the United State Supreme Court, ****** v. Struthers, 319 U.S. 141, 63 S.Ct. 862, 87 L.Ed. 1313 (1943), as authority in support of their position. {¶ 11} In Struthers, a Jehovah's Witness knocked on doors and rang doorbells to distribute leaflets advertising a religious meeting. She was convicted of violating a city ordinance that made it 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 materials. The ordinance had been enacted to protect residents from being disturbed in the hours of rest, and to prevent criminals from posing as canvassers. The defendant argued that the ordinance violated her First Amendment rights. {¶12} The Supreme Court of the United States reversed the defendant's conviction, holding that the municipal ordinance prohibiting any person to knock on doors or otherwise summon to the door the occupants of a residence for the purpose of distributing to them handbills or circulars was invalid as applied to the defendant distributing advertisements for a religious meeting. {¶ 13} Struthers differed from the present case in two ways. First, it involved the distribution of religious materials, while the present case involves a publication containing mostly advertisements. Second, Struthers involved an individual knocking on doors and summoning an occupant to the door to receive a leaflet, while the present case involves the depositing of a publication in residents' yards — a much less intrusive method of delivery. Because of these factual differences, Struthers is not directly on point. Nonetheless, the court's reasoning in that case provides some guidance in our analysis of the issue before us, that is, whether a distribution of publications to households without prior consent constitutes trespass. The Struthers court reasoned: Traditionally the American law punishes persons who enter onto the property of another after having been warned by the owner to keep off. * * * We know of no state which, as does the Struthers ordinance in effect, makes a person a criminal trespasser if he enters the property of another for an innocent purpose without an explicit command from the owners to stay away. The National Institute of Municipal Law Officers has proposed a form of regulation to its member cities which would make it an offense for any person to ring the bell of a householder who has appropriately indicated that he is unwilling to be disturbed. This or any similar regulation leaves the decision as to whether distributers of literature may lawfully call at a home where it belongs — with the homeowner himself. A city can punish those who call at a home in defiance of the previously expressed will of the occupant * * *. In any case, the problem must be worked out by each community for itself with due respect for the constitutional rights of those desiring to distribute literature and those desiring to receive it, as well as those who choose to exclude such distributors from the home. (Footnotes omitted and emphasis added.) Id. at 147-149.
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