Case summaries

 

 


Case Name: Amalgamated Food Employee Union Local 590 v. Logan Valley, 391 U.S. 308 (1968)
Argued: March 14, 1968
Date Decided: May 20, 1968
Vote: 6-3
Facts: Petitioners were non-employee union members picketing respondent's employment practices. The business was located in a privately owned shopping center. A Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas enjoined the picketing and trespassing inside the shopping center. On the grounds that the petitioners were trespassing, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania enjoined the injunction.
Issue: Whether peaceful picketing of a business enterprise located within a privately owned shopping center can be enjoined on the ground that it constitutes an unconsented invasion of the owner's property rights.
Legal Basis for Decision: The Supreme Court held that the shopping center was the functional equivalent of a business district. Because the shopping center served as a community business block and was freely accessible and open to the public, the Court determined that "the state could not delegate the power, through the use of its trespass laws, to exclude those members of the public wishing to exercise their First Amendment rights in the premises in a manner and for a purpose generally consonant with the use to which the property was actually put." Because the shopping center was the functional equivalent of a business district, it was treated in the same manner by the Court.
Quotable: "If title to municipal property is, standing alone, an insufficient basis for prohibiting all entry onto such property for the purposes of distributing printed matter, it is likewise an insufficient basis for prohibiting all entry for the purpose of carrying an informational placard."
Writing for the Majority: Justice Marshall
 
Case Name: Hudgens v. National Labor Relations Board, 424 U.S. 507 (1976)
Argued: Oct. 14, 1975
Date Decided: March 3, 1976
Vote: 7-1
Facts: Striking warehouse employees and union members began picketing their employer's retail store, located in a privately owned shopping center. They departed after being threatened with arrest. The union filed a complaint with the NLRB. Relying on the Court's decision in Amalgamated Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U.S. 308 (1968), the court entered a cease-and-desist order against the shopping center. The U.S. Court of Appeals remanded the case for reconsideration based on Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551 (1972). On remand, the NLRB again concluded that the shopping center had committed an unfair labor practice, and the court of appeals enforced the cease-and-desist order.
Issue: Whether respondents, in the exercise of asserted First Amendment rights, may distribute handbills on private property contrary to the owner's wishes and contrary to a policy against handbilling.
Legal Basis for Decision: The Court rejected the contention that all members of the public, whether invited as customers or not, have the same right of free speech at the shopping center as they would have at similar public facilities in the streets of a city or town. The Court determined that such an argument reaches too far and concluded that "there was no dedication of Lloyd's privately owned and operated shopping center to public use as to entitle respondents to exercise therein the asserted First Amendment rights." The Court went further, stating, "if it was not clear before, the rationale of Logan Valley did not survive the Court's decision in Lloyd."
Quotable: "The ultimate holding in Lloyd amounted to a total rejection of the holding in Logan Valley."
Writing for the Majority: Justice Stewart
 
Case Name: Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551 (1972)
Argued: April 18, 1972
Date Decided: June 22, 1972
Vote: 5-4
Facts: After being barred by a privately owned shopping center from distributing handbills, anti-war protesters secured an injunction in a federal district court against interference with their non-commercial handbilling in a peaceful and orderly manner in the shopping center's public areas. The injunction was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Issue: Here the Court confronted the question it had reserved in Amalgamated Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U.S. 308 (1968). The issue before the Court was whether a privately owned shopping center could prohibit the distribution of handbills on its property when the handbilling was unrelated to the operations of the shopping center.
Legal Basis for Decision: The Court declined to extend the rationale of Logan Valley. Logan Valley was distinguished on narrow grounds as limited to a labor dispute involving one of that shopping center's tenants and occurring under conditions where no realistic alternative for expression existed. Noting that the Lloyd Corp. respondent's message was directed to all members of the public, the Court concluded that the respondents could have distributed their handbills on "any public street, on any public sidewalk, in any public park, or in any public building." Therefore, respondents were not entitled to exercise their free-speech rights on the privately owned shopping-center property.
Quotable: The shopping center has issued "no open-ended invitation to the public to use the Center for any and all purposes, however incompatible with the interests of both the stores and the shoppers whom they serve."
Writing for the Majority: Justice Powell
 
Case Name: Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946)
Argued: Dec. 6, 1945
Date Decided: Jan. 7, 1946
Vote: 5-3
Facts: Appellant, a Jehovah's Witness attempted to distribute religious literature on a sidewalk in Chickasaw, Ala. Chickasaw was owned by the Gulf Shipbuilding Corp., but the town and its shopping district were accessible to and freely used by the public in general. Except that title rested in the hands of a private company, the town was indistinguishable from any other municipality. Appellant was warned that she could not distribute her literature without a permit and that no permit would be issued to her. After being warned to leave, appellant protested and was subsequently arrested for violating the Alabama Code, which makes it a crime to enter or remain on the premises of another after having been warned not to do so. Appellant contended that application of the law to her was a violation of her First and 14th amendments. This contention was rejected, and she was convicted. The conviction was sustained by the Alabama Court of Appeals.
Issue: Whether a State, consistent with the First and 14th amendments, can impose criminal sanctions on a person who undertakes to distribute religious literature on the premises of a company-owned town, contrary to the wishes on the town managers.
Legal Basis for Decision: While the Court noted the importance of private-property rights, it concluded that because the company-owned town displayed many attributes of a municipality, the state-action requirement was satisfied for the constitutional purposes of sustaining free-speech rights. According to the Court, "whether a corporation or a municipality owns or possesses the town the public in either case has an identical interest in the functioning of the community in such manner that the channels of communication remain free. The Court noted that it was necessary for all citizens, even those living in company-owned towns, to have access to "uncensored" information in order to make informed decisions about those things that affect the welfare of the community as well as the nation.
Quotable: "The more an owner, for his own advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it."
Writing for the Majority: Justice Black
 
Case Name: Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robbins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980)
Argued: March 18, 1980
Date Decided: June 9, 1980
Vote: Unanimous
Facts: A group of high school students opposed to a U.N. resolution against Zionism set up a table in the Pruneyard Shopping Center and attempted to solicit support for their cause. Appellees filed suit after being informed that they would have to leave the premises. The Superior Court held that appellees were not entitled under the Federal or California Constitution to exercise their asserted First Amendment rights on the shopping-center property. The California Court of Appeals affirmed. The California Supreme Court, however, reversed, holding that the California Constitution protects "speech and petitioning, reasonably exercised, in shopping centers even when the centers are privately owned.
Issue: Whether state constitutional provisions, which permit individuals to exercise free- speech and petition rights on the property of a privately owned shopping center to which the public is invited, violate the shopping-center owner's property rights under the Fifth and 14th Amendments or his free speech rights under the First and 14th amendments.
Legal Basis for Decision: The Supreme Court affirmed the state court's decision, noting that its own reasoning in Lloyd "does not ex proprio vigor limit the authority of the State to exercise its police power or its sovereign right to adopt in its own Constitution individual liberties more expansive than those conferred by the Federal Constitution."
Quotable: "A state in the exercise of its police power may adopt reasonable restrictions on private property so long as the restrictions do not amount to a taking without just compensation or contravene any other federal constitutional provisions."
Writing for the Majority: Justice Rehnquist