TexasCHLforum.com

ELB wrote:My analysis is that the website for a church, apparently set up by the church, provides information and policies by the owners and people authorized by the owners. If you take the time to read the site, and click through to the weapons policy (nothing haphazard about that, you did it), and read the statutorily correct language provided there, then you have been provided notice.

If may be another matter to prove that you read it in court, but that is a separate issue, and an interesting one from a moral stand point.

I have a personal website. I think I'll post the wording on it so everyone visiting my home will have notification not to carry at my home!

Really???

It's not the job of a visiter to seek out all possible places where there might be written documents prohibiting carry. If it is and I find none then what if I failed to look far enough? What if I miss one?

The owner must provide notice. That provision must be effectual and not depend on serendipitous discovery or it's meaningless.

tex

My analysis is this...

30.05, 30.06, and 30.07 require SIGNAGE to be placed conspicuously and clearly visible to the public. It would seem that the purpose for this is to ensure that the person to who the prohibition applies actually gets the message. There is an implied "you can't reasonably or fairly be held responsible if we don't ensure you get the message". So the legislature writes that into the law.

As to written documentation in .06/.07 the owner or person acting on the owners authority must...provide notice by.... Those words must mean something other than simply writing a notice on some medium and expecting that the intended receiver will haphazardly come to see it. It would seem that to provide the written document there must be a more deliberately targeted act than simply leaving the notice to be found by serendipity, such as might be the case with a visiter to a church. Members of the church, it could be argued, are made aware of the rules of the organization...perhaps.

But a deliberate providing of a notice to a person seems implied with written documents. Keep in mind there are three methods of notification. With oral there is an implied requirement that the oral notice is personally targeted and direct. With signage there is a requirement of conspicuousness. If this were not the case with written documents then it would the the only one of the three that does not require direct provision to the intended receiver. This does not seem likely.

Otherwise, they could simply leave written documents laying around and claim that they provided you with notice. Remember, a prosecutor must prove you were provided notice.

So my conclusion is that merely posting the notice on the website, although it is probably considered a written document does not meet the requirement of providing notice...IF...the direct provision theory is correct.

tex