Can the government impose a financial charge on exercising free speech rights?
Sometimes. Increasingly, local governments are imposing financial costs as a condition of exercising free speech rights. These include application fees, security deposits for clean-up, or charges to cover overtime police costs. Courts have permitted charges that cover actual administrative costs and actual costs of re-routing traffic, so long as they are uniformly imposed on all groups. Courts will not, however, allow extra costs (such as high insurance costs) to be imposed on a group because their event is controversial or a hostile crowd is expected. Also, these regulations often include a waiver for groups without significant financial resources.
