WASHINGTON - People have the right to go door to door to advocate for religious, political or other noncommercial causes without first getting the government's permission, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday in a lopsided constitutional victory for the ministry of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

The 8-1 decision struck down a small Ohio town's ordinance that made it a crime for any "canvasser" or "solicitor" to pay an uninvited visit on any of the 278 residents for the purpose of promoting or explaining any "cause" without providing identification and obtaining a permit from the mayor's office.

The village of Stratton, Ohio, interpreted "canvassers" to include Jehovah's Witnesses, with whom the mayor, John M. Abdalla, had long had a tense relationship, and "cause" to include their door-to-door ministry.

While drawing on a long series of Supreme Court precedents that found constitutional protection for the proudly nonconformist views of the Jehovah's Witnesses - who refuse to salute the flag, for example - the decision was not limited to religious expression.

In his majority opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens noted that the ordinance appeared to apply to neighbors ringing one another's doorbells to solicit support for political candidates or improved public services.

"It is offensive, not only to the values protected by the First Amendment, but to the very notion of a free society," Stevens said, "that in the context of everyday public discourse a citizen must first inform the government of her desire to speak to her neighbors and then obtain a permit to do so."

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was the lone dissenter. He cited recent crimes, including the killings of a Dartmouth University faculty couple, allegedly by two teen-agers who gained entry by claiming to be conducting a survey, in arguing that the Stratton ordinance was a valid approach to crime control.

"The Constitution does not require that Stratton first endure its own crime wave before it takes measures to prevent crime," the chief justice said.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the "crime prevention justification" that the chief justice invoked in support of the ordinance was "not a strong one" because the village itself had not relied on it.

Stratton argued that the 1998 ordinance was justified by the need to protect residents' privacy and deter fraud, mentioning crime only in passing.

Although the scale of the case was small, involving a tiny village on the Ohio River and a 59-member Jehovah's Witnesses congregation from a nearby town, its themes and implications were large, reflected in briefs filed by national organizations.

For some, the important theme was not so much the restraint on speech as the value the court placed on anonymous speech. Two recent Supreme Court decisions upholding the right of political canvassers and pamphleteers to remain anonymous have alarmed supporters of campaign finance disclosure requirements.

Many cities and towns have ordinances regulating commercial solicitation, and those were not affected by the ruling.

Stevens suggested that the Stratton ordinance might well have been constitutional had the village applied it "only to commercial activities and the solicitation of funds."

A brief from the Mormon church told the court that restrictions on religious proselytizing were increasingly common. The brief asked the court to rule that religious expression had a "preferred status" under the First Amendment.

But the court's treatment of the ordinance as a broad restriction on advocacy made it unnecessary for the justices to reopen their debate over whether religious activities should be exempt from generally applicable regulations.

Jehovah's Witnesses who regularly visited Stratton refused to seek a permit on the ground that their authority was derived from the Bible and not the state. They challenged the ordinance and lost, both in U.S. District Court and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Cincinnati.

In other action yesterday, the court:

Ruled that police can question passengers on buses and trains and search for evidence without informing them that they can refuse.

Officers routinely check buses and trains for drug couriers. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, they also have focused efforts on possible terrorists who could be using public transportation.

Police in Tallahassee, Fla., were within their rights to move up the aisle of a Greyhound bus, asking questions of each passenger and, in the case of two men wearing heavy clothing on a warm day, asking to search their luggage and bodies, the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3.

The officers found bricks of cocaine strapped to the men's legs, and they were later convicted on drug charges.

Threw out a decision that gave a second chance to a man sentenced to death for 13 murders. But the court did not definitively settle whether George Banks - or potentially dozens of other Pennsylvania death row inmates - was sentenced properly.

Justices said in an unsigned opinion that a lower court must look again at what jurors were told before they sentenced Banks to die for killing his five children and eight other people in a shooting rampage in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in 1982.

Delivered a blow to disabled Americans who want cash awards from cities and states for failing to build wheelchair ramps and make other accommodations. It was the court's fourth setback for the disabled this year.

Government agencies can be forced to pay actual damages but not punitive damages for violating a landmark disabilities law, the court ruled.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.