SAVANNAH, Ga. » Especially when she sips French onion soup at a restaurant that was featured in the Julia Roberts movie "Something to Talk About," Michelle Freenor is an irrepressible tour guide.

She rattles off the history of Methodism in this city, as well as tidbits about William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea. She discusses the canopy of Spanish moss that hangs above Savannah’s streets, whether "Jingle Bells" was actually composed here, and just how haunted one of the country’s largest historic landmark districts might be.

But Freenor has also emerged in recent weeks in a new role: plaintiff in a federal lawsuit that could reshape Savannah’s lucrative and potent tourism industry. Backed by a nonprofit law firm with libertarian leanings, Freenor and three others, including her husband, are challenging the Savannah ordinance that requires tour guides to hold licenses and pass regular academic and medical examinations.

"It’s the free market that made us successful, not the city of Savannah," said Freenor, 43. "You shouldn’t have to pass a test to be able to tell people where the best ice cream in Savannah is." She said autoimmune disorders could make her need a wheelchair in the coming years and keep her from receiving a compulsory doctor’s certification.

The case here is the latest significant courtroom pushback to municipal regulations that govern tour guides in a small number of cities like Charleston, South Carolina, and New York. A pair of federal appeals courts – one in New Orleans and another in Washington – this year reached divergent conclusions about such rules, raising the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually decide the matter.

Freenor and her lawyers from the Institute for Justice, which is involved in the Savannah litigation as well as the cases in Louisiana and the District of Columbia, contend that the license requirements breach the First Amendment’s free-speech protections.

"What tour guides do is talk for a living," said Robert Johnson, one of Freenor’s lawyers. "They’re just like stand-up comedians, journalists or novelists. And in this country, you don’t need a license from the government to be able to talk."

Officials in Savannah, which enacted its tour services ordinance in 1978 and now has about 330 registered guides, wondered for months whether the law here would be tested in court. In a Dec. 12 court filing, city lawyers said the standards "serve an important governmental purpose and are a proper exercise of the city’s police power."

Bridget Lidy, Savannah’s tourism director, said licensing was a critical safeguard for the city’s hospitality industry, which generates more than $2.2 billion annually.

"We feel as though there needs to be some kind of standard in place that protects the integrity of our community," Lidy said at City Hall, where the dome and cupola are covered in gold.

But such standards have come under scrutiny in recent years amid a legal assault that has had a mixed record of success.

In June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit struck down the licensing rules put in place by local officials in Washington, including a test with 100 questions, the same length as Savannah’s examination.

"How does memorization of addresses and other, pettifogging data about the District’s points of interest protect tourists from being swindled or harassed by charlatans?" Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote in a 25-page opinion. "Why would a licensed tour guide be any less likely to treat tourists unfairly and unsafely by abandoning them in some far-flung spot or charging additional amounts for return passage? Surely, success on the District’s history exam cannot be thought to impart both knowledge and virtue."

But the same month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld similar standards in New Orleans. The city, the court found, did nothing to limit what guides could say and was only trying to maintain its brand and its visitors.

"New Orleans, by requiring the licensees to know the city and not be felons or drug addicts, has effectively promoted the government interests, and without those protections for the city and its visitors, the government interest would be unserved," Judge Thomas M. Reavley wrote.

The guides who brought the case against New Orleans asked the Supreme Court in November to hear their appeal; the justices have not said whether they will accept the case.

In Savannah, though, there are doubts that the licensing requirement will survive the scrutiny of the federal judicial system.

"My position at this point is, how do we prepare to lose?" said Bill Durrence, a Savannah native and member of the Downtown Neighborhood Association who has long supported the licensing standards. "This isn’t a political argument we can make; this is going to happen in a court of law. We can protest and we can write letters to the editor, but it’s going to have no impact on the court."

Durrence said alternatives to the existing structure could include a voluntary certification program, which would offer guides additional credibility.

Before the lawsuit was filed, the city opened a review of the ordinance, which could lead to an overhaul of the system. And in the coming months, Savannah officials will receive the results of a tourism-focused survey they planned to distribute to 2,000 of the city’s nearly 143,000 residents.

Freenor, a former member of Savannah’s Tourism Advisory Committee, predicted little substantive change without a court’s intervention.

"I wanted to change it," she said. "I tried to go the right avenues, but no one would listen."

Lidy said city officials and others were prepared to work within the limits of a court’s decision, whatever it may be, to sustain Savannah’s reputation as a haven for visitors.

"They feel strongly," she said, "about making sure that this community has some kind of standard in place."

Alan Blinder, New York Times

© 2014 The New York Times Company