In Our View:

OFF LIMITS

While we commiserate with families trapped in crime-ridden public housing
neighborhoods, we're not convinced that the U.S. Supreme Court took the
correct - or constitutional - approach this week in ruling that the
government may designate areas off-limits for unauthorized visitors.

Could that mean that members of a church visitation group knocking on doors
to encourage people to attend services might find themselves hauled before
a court and subject to a fine or perhaps even a jail term? Hardly. That
scenario would overstep the boundaries of free speech and religious expression.

But the decision does give the government an explicit right to decide who
may or may not walk on a sidewalk or drive on a street built by public
money if those streets and sidewalks run through areas described as
crime-infested public housing. People would have to justify their reasons
before being in that neighborhood.

There is something sinister about the government requiring that roller
skaters or bird-watchers - to use examples offered by Justice Antonin
Scalia - justify their being in a neighborhood or, failing that, ask for
government permission to trespass. That's the sort of stuff we read about
happening in banana republics.

The court is trying to give law enforcement authorities an extra tool for
dealing with drug dealers, gang members and thugs looking for someone to
rob, rape or beat up. It upheld a 1997 Virginia trespassing ordinance that
could be used to get rid of undesirables who the court agrees have no
specific, justifiable business in a neighborhood. "The rules apply to
(those) ... not engaged in constitutionally protected conduct - a group
that would seemingly far outnumber First Amendment speakers," Scalia wrote.

The decision came in the case of Kevin Hicks, who had been arrested twice
for trespassing at the housing complex where his mother and two children
live and was ordered barred. His reason for being there this time? He said
he was dropping off diapers. That clearly isn't a free-speech issue, but it
does raise common-sense questions about other liberties, including the
right to move about freely. If he had had the presence of mind to shout a
few anti-government slogans or announce his candidacy for an elective
office as he made his alleged diaper delivery, his visit to the complex
would have been constitutionally protected and therefore would never have
been a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

It is outrageous that some public housing projects have evolved into drug
markets and that their residents are at perpetual risk of violence. Uncle
Sam and the states should do more to put drug dealers out of business and
to protect the lives of the innocent in public housing complexes. But the
high court's solution is flawed. There has to be a better way.