At issue is the city's peddling rules, which say anyone selling products in the public way must have a license to do so. But Smerge argued that newspapers are exempt from those rules and that his magazine falls into that category. He also argued that a law preventing him from selling on public sidewalks adjacent to the ball park would illegally discriminate based on content of the publication, and he noted that his vendors had sold the magazines for nearly two decades with minimal police interference. SAFETY CONCERNS Alonso ruled that the Wrigley ordinance does not specifically exempt newspapers in the first place and that the rule keeping vendors across the street is designed specifically as a safety precaution. "The ban on peddling on the sidewalks immediately adjacent to Wrigley Field is narrowly tailored to address the congestion and safety problems that occur when tens of thousands of people are funneled along a crowded streetscape to a stadium occupying a single block," Alonso wrote in the opinion.