Tour Guides In Savannah Sue To End City’s Licensing Requirement

The Institute for Justice:

Savannah, Ga.—Tour guides are storytellers, and in America, you shouldn’t need a license to tell a story. But the city of Savannah disagrees, imposing a host of regulatory burdens on people who want to talk to paying tour groups.

That’s why, today, a coalition of current and would-be Savannah tour guides has joined forces with the Institute for Justice to file a federal lawsuit seeking to vindicate an important First Amendment principle: The government cannot require a license to tell a story.

For years, the city of Savannah has required tour guides to run a bureaucratic gauntlet of requirements to obtain a license before they can lead a tour. Guides are required to take a multiple-choice test on the city’s history, undergo a criminal background check and produce a certificate from a doctor verifying that they are sufficiently healthy to talk. In addition, Savannah makes the city’s tour guides pay a special speech tax based on the size of their audience.

Anyone who leads a tour without a license risks fines, jail time or even forced participation in a municipal “work gang.”