While the United States is the richest country on earth, people asking for money is a common occurrence. Last week, when I went to CVS to get my COVID shot, a person laying on the sidewalk asked me for money. I’m often approached while grocery shopping and even while running. Although I have been told I am just helping to buy someone drugs or beer, I routinely give people cash. This is a moral choice, and I would be going against my own professed principles if I did not help people, even when they might be deceiving me about what they will purchase. But some people find panhandling a problem and not in terms of people needing to beg for money.

Local officials sometimes believe panhandlers are detrimental to businesses and tourism and there have been efforts to ban begging. While local governments try to craft laws to pass constitutional muster, their efforts have generally proven futile in the face of the First Amendment. While the legal questions are addressed by courts, there remains the moral question of whether banning panhandling can be morally justified.

One starting point for a moral argument for banning panhandling is a utilitarian approach. Local officials generally want bans because they believe panhandlers are bad for businesses and tourism. For example, if potential customers are accosted by panhandlers on the streets around businesses, then they are less likely to patronize those businesses.

As another example, if a city gets a reputation for being awash in panhandlers who annoy tourists with, then tourism might decline. From the perspective of the business owners and the local officials, these effects would have negative value that outweigh the benefits to the panhandlers of being able to ask for money. There is presumably also utility in encouraging panhandlers to move away to other locations, thus removing the financial and social cost of having panhandlers. If this utilitarian calculation is accurate, then banning panhandling would be morally acceptable. Of course, if the calculation is not correct and such a ban would do more harm than good, then the ban would be morally wrong.

A second utilitarian argument is the safety argument. While panhandlers generally do not engage in violence (they are asking for money and not trying to rob people), some claim they do present a risk. One concern is that by panhandling in or near traffic, they put themselves and others in danger. If this is true, then banning panhandling would be the right thing to do.  If, however, the alleged harm does not justify the ban, then it would be morally unacceptable.

There is also the reply that safety concerns could be addressed by having laws that forbid people from obstructing the flow of traffic and being a danger to themselves and others. Presumably these laws already exist in most places. There is also the concern that the safety argument would need to be applied consistently to all such allegedly risky behavior around traffic, such as people engaging in political campaigns or street side advertising.

One can advance a utilitarian argument in favor of panhandling based on the harm that could be done by restricting the panhandlers’ rights. Following Mill’s classic argument, if panhandlers are not harming people with their panhandling, then it would be wrong to limit their freedom to engage in this behavior. This is on the condition that panhandling is merely annoying and does not involve threatening behavior or harassment. After all, politicians are allowed to annoy us with texts and emails begging for money, so they would be hard pressed to consistently oppose panhandling while asking us for money.

It could be objected that panhandling does cause harm. As noted above, the presence of panhandlers could harm local businesses. People can also regard panhandling as an infringement on their freedom to not be bothered in public. While this does have some appeal, this justification of a panhandling ban would also justify banning any public behavior people found annoying or that had some perceived impact on local businesses. This could include public displays of expression, political campaigning, preaching in public and many other behaviors. In short, the problem is that there is not something distinct about panhandling that would allow it to be banned without also justifying the ban of other activities. To simply ban it because it is panhandling would seem to solve this problem but would not. After all, if an activity can be justly banned because it is that activity, then this would apply to any activity. After all, every activity is the activity it is.

Those who prefer an alternative to utilitarian calculations can easily defend panhandling against proposed bans by appealing to a right of free expression and behavior that is not based on utility. If people do have the moral right to free expression, then reasons would need to be advanced that would be strong enough to warrant violating this right. As noted above, an appeal could be made to the rights of businesses and the rights of other people to avoid being annoyed. However, the right to not be annoyed does not seem to trump the right of expression until the annoyance becomes significant. As such, a panhandler does have the right to annoy others by asking for money, but if it crosses over into actual harassment, then this would be handled by the fact that people do not have a right to harassment.

In the case of businesses, while they do have a right to engage in free commerce, they do not have a right to expect people to behave in ways that are conducive to their business. If, for example, people found it offensive to have runners running downtown and decided to take their business elsewhere, this would not warrant a runner ban. But, if runners were blocking access to the businesses by stretching in the entrances, then the owners’ rights would be violated. Likewise, if panhandlers are disliked by people and they decide to take their business elsewhere, this does not violate the rights of the businesses. But, if panhandlers started harassing people and blocking access to the businesses, then this would violate the rights of the owners.