A guy is in his car when somebody on the street calls out to him, “I miss Twinkies.”

An innocent remark.

Well, perhaps not.

Because one day soon, should the conduct, not the words of the guy jonesing aloud about his favorite snack, make the guy behind the wheel feel threatened, Auburn Police could arrest and throw him in jail.

And, depending on where the crime occurred and whether it constitutes a misdemeanor or a gross misdemeanor, he could be fined up to $1,000.

Even on those ramps that intersect with the City’s own rights of way.

Before that’s possible, however, the Auburn City Council has to change the part of the City code that deals with aggressive begging and disorderly conduct.

Assistant City Attorney Jessica Leiser told a recent study session of the Auburn Council that the reason for the suggested amendment is to bring the code into compliance with the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision Reed vs. Town of Gilbert. In that decision, the High Court said local ordinances that apply differently to signs, depending on the messages they convey, are subject to “strict-scrutiny” under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Strict scrutiny is the highest level of review a court can apply, and few regulations except those that bear on child pornography survive it.

Leiser said any regulation where one has to read the message – be it verbal or written – to decide which regulation to apply is content based, and therefore subject to strict scrutiny.

“We want to target the fear, even if the message is … ‘hot dogs are delicious’ … What you see here is a focus on the conduct, or the feeling (with which) the recipient has interpreted that message, and us moving away from the content of the message itself,” Leiser said.

As proposed, the scope of the amendment is limited to interactions between people in vehicles and people on the street.

“How do we differentiate someone who’s just grabbing a few dollars and someone who’s actually causing a traffic obstruction?” inquired Councilman Claude DaCorsi.

“It would be up to the individual discretion of each officer who would be observing the situation that occurred,” Leiser responded. “When you have a situation, more likely than not, the scenario that you are describing would be addressed under the provisions that we are suggesting … and in an updated version, instead of aggressive begging, that would be retitled ‘disruption to flow of traffic.’ Something momentarily fleeting probably is not going to rise to a level that an individual officer is concerned about vehicular safety. However, I think it would be determined on a case-to-case basis.”