EDITORIAL
High court makes sound speech ruling

There are few among us who haven't experienced a flash of annoyance when our dinner or weekend nap was interrupted by someone at the door, selling some kind of product or even a religious point of view.

So we all might have a little sympathy with the officials of Stratton, Ohio, who imposed a law that no person could canvass door to door without a permit from the mayor.

It wasn't a particularly onerous rule: The mayor could only issue the permit; he had no right to reject it.

Still, the Jehovah's Witnesses sued on grounds that the restriction was unconstitutional. And the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed, with an impressive 8-1 decision that throws out the ordinance. (Chief Justice William Rehnquist dissented).

Justice John Paul Stevens pointed out that even this mild restriction violates basic First Amendment values. For instance, he asked what would happen if someone suddenly became swept up in a cause he wanted to bring to his or her neighbors on the weekend, when government offices were closed?

But fundamentally, what the court said was that there is no room for government intrusion into the middle of protected speech from neighbor to neighbor.

Yes, such canvassing can be annoying. And we have every right to refuse to answer the door or to tell the people to go away.

But it is not the government's place to license such communication. That's an important lesson other jurisdictions should heed, particularly as we head into a heated and busy campaign election season.