AMALGAMATED FOOD EMPLOYEES UNION LOCAL 590 ET AL. v. LOGAN VALLEY PLAZA, INC., ET AL.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
391 U.S. 308
May 20, 1968, Decided


 
MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case presents the question whether peaceful picketing of a business enterprise located within a shopping center can be enjoined on the ground that it constitutes an unconsented invasion of the property rights of the owners of the land on which the center is situated. We granted certiorari to consider petitioners' contentions that the decisions of the state courts enjoining their picketing as a trespass are violative of their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.  We reverse.

Logan Valley Plaza, Inc. (Logan), one of the two respondents herein, owns a large, newly developed shopping center complex, known as the Logan Valley Mall, located near the City of Altoona, Pennsylvania. The shopping center is situated at the intersection of Plank Road, which is to the east of the center, and Good's Lane, which is to the south. Plank Road, also known as U.S. Route 220, is a heavily traveled highway along which traffic moves at a fairly high rate of speed. There are five entrance roads into the center, three from Plank Road and two from Good's Lane. Aside from these five entrances, the shopping center is totally separated from the adjoining roads by earthen berms.

At the time of the events in this case, Logan Valley Mall was occupied by two businesses, Weis Markets, Inc. (Weis), the other respondent herein, and Sears, Roebuck and Co. (Sears), although other enterprises were then expected and have since moved into the center. Weis operates a supermarket and Sears operates both a department store and an automobile service center. The Weis property consists of the enclosed supermarket building, an open but covered porch along the front of the building, and an approximately five-foot-wide parcel pickup zone that runs 30 to 40 feet along the porch. The porch functions as a sidewalk in front of the building and the pickup zone is used as a temporary parking place for the loading of purchases into customers' cars by Weis employees....

On December 8, 1965, Weis opened for business, employing a wholly nonunion staff of employees. A few days after it opened for business, Weis posted a sign on the exterior of its building prohibiting trespassing or soliciting by anyone other than its employees on its porch or parking lot. On December 17, 1965, members of Amalgamated Food Employees Union, Local 590, began picketing Weis. They carried signs stating that the Weis market was nonunion and that its employees were not "receiving union wages or other union benefits." The pickets did not include any employees of Weis, but rather were all employees of competitors of Weis. The picketing continued until December 27, during which time the number of pickets varied between four and 13 and averaged around six. The picketing was carried out almost entirely in the parcel pickup area and that portion of the parking lot immediately adjacent thereto. Although some congestion of the parcel pickup area occurred, such congestion was sporadic and infrequent. The picketing was peaceful at all times and unaccompanied by either threats or violence.

On December 27, Weis and Logan instituted an action in equity in the Court of Common Pleas of Blair County, and that court immediately issued an ex parte order enjoining petitioners from, inter alia, "picketing and trespassing upon . . . the [Weis] storeroom, porch and parcel pick-up area . . . [and] the [Logan] parking area and all entrances and exits leading to said parking area."  The effect of this order was to require that all picketing be carried on along the berms beside the public roads outside the shopping center. Picketing continued along the berms and, in addition, handbills asking the public not to patronize Weis because it was nonunion were distributed, while petitioners contested the validity of the ex parte injunction. After an evidentiary hearing, which resulted in the establishment of the facts set forth above, the Court of Common Pleas continued indefinitely its original ex parte injunction without modification. That court explicitly rejected petitioners' claim under the First Amendment that they were entitled to picket within the confines of the shopping center...

We start from the premise that peaceful picketing carried on in a location open generally to the public is, absent other factors involving the purpose or manner of the picketing, protected by the First Amendment....

The case squarely presents the question whether Pennsylvania's generally valid rules against trespass to private property can be applied in these circumstances to bar petitioners from the Weis and Logan premises. It is clear that if the shopping center premises were not privately owned but instead constituted the business area of a municipality, which they to a large extent resemble, petitioners could not be barred from exercising their First Amendment rights there on the sole ground that title to the property was in the municipality. The essence of those opinions is that streets, sidewalks, parks, and other similar public places are so historically associated with the exercise of First Amendment rights that access to them for the purpose of exercising such rights cannot constitutionally be denied broadly and absolutely....

This Court has held, in Marsh v. Alabama (1946), that under some circumstances property that is privately owned may, at least for First Amendment purposes, be treated as though it were publicly held. In Marsh, the appellant, a Jehovah's Witness, had undertaken to distribute religious literature on a sidewalk in the business district of Chickasaw, Alabama. Chickasaw, a so-called company town, was wholly owned by the Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation. "The property consists of residential buildings, streets, a system of sewers, a sewage disposal plant and a 'business block' on which business places are situated. . . . The residents use the business block as their regular shopping center. To do so, they now, as they have for many years, make use of a company-owned paved street and sidewalk located alongside the store fronts in order to enter and leave the stores and the post office. Intersecting company-owned roads at each end of the business block lead into a four-lane public highway which runs parallel to the business block at a distance of thirty feet. There is nothing to stop highway traffic from coming onto the business block and upon arrival a traveler may make free use of the facilities available there. In short the town and its shopping district are accessible to and freely used by the public in general and there is nothing to distinguish them from any other town and shopping center except the fact that the title to the property belongs to a private corporation."

The corporation had posted notices in the stores stating that the premises were private property and that no solicitation of any kind without written permission would be permitted. Appellant Marsh was told that she must have a permit to distribute her literature and that a permit would not be granted to her. When she declared that the company rule could not be utilized to prevent her from exercising her constitutional rights under the First Amendment, she was ordered to leave Chickasaw. She refused to do so and was arrested for violating Alabama's criminal trespass statute. In reversing her conviction under the statute, this Court held that the fact that the property from which appellant was sought to be ejected for exercising her First Amendment rights was owned by a private corporation rather than the State was an insufficient basis to justify the infringement on appellant's right to free expression occasioned thereby. Likewise the fact that appellant Marsh was herself not a resident of the town was not considered material.

The similarities between the business block in Marsh and the shopping center in the present case are striking. The perimeter of Logan Valley Mall is a little less than 1.1 miles. Inside the mall were situated, at the time of trial, two substantial commercial enterprises with numerous others soon to follow. Immediately adjacent to the mall are two roads, one of which is a heavily traveled vstate highway and from both of which lead entrances directly into the mall. Adjoining the buildings in the middle of the mall are sidewalks for the use of pedestrians going to and from their cars and from building to building. In the parking areas, roadways for the use of vehicular traffic entering and leaving the mall are clearly marked out. The general public has unrestricted access to the mall property. The shopping center here is clearly the functional equivalent of the business district of Chickasaw involved in Marsh.

It is true that, unlike the corporation in Marsh, the respondents here do not own the surrounding residential property and do not provide municipal services therefor. Presumably, petitioners are free to canvass the neighborhood with their message about the nonunion status of Weis Market, just as they have been permitted by the state courts to picket on the berms outside the mall. Thus, unlike the situation in Marsh, there is no power on respondents' part to have petitioners totally denied access to the community for which the mall serves as a business district. This fact, however, is not determinative. In Marsh itself the precise issue presented was whether the appellant therein had the right, under the First Amendment, to pass out leaflets in the business district, since there was no showing made there that the corporate owner would have sought to prevent the distribution of leaflets in the residential areas of the town. While it is probable that the power to prevent trespass broadly claimed in Marsh would have encompassed such an incursion into the residential areas, the specific facts in the case involved access to property used for commercial purposes.

We see no reason why access to a business district in a company town for the purpose of exercising First Amendment rights should be constitutionally required, while access for the same purpose to property functioning as a business district should be limited simply because the property surrounding the "business district" is not under the same ownership. Here the roadways provided for vehicular movement within the mall and the sidewalks leading from building to building are the functional equivalents of the streets and sidewalks of a normal municipal business district. The shopping center premises are open to the public to the same extent as the commercial center of a normal town. So far as can be determined, the main distinction in practice between use by the public of the Logan Valley Mall and of any other business district, were the decisions of the state courts to stand, would be that those members of the general public who sought to use the mall premises in a manner contrary to the wishes of the respondents could be prevented from so doing.

Such a power on the part of respondents would be, of course, part and parcel of the rights traditionally associated with ownership of private property. And it may well be that respondents' ownership of the property here in question gives them various rights, under the laws of Pennsylvania, to limit the use of that property by members of the public in a manner that would not be permissible were the property owned by a municipality. All we decide here is that because the shopping center serves as the community business block "and is freely accessible and open to the people in the area and those passing through," the State may not delegate the power, through the use of its trespass laws, wholly to exclude those members of the public wishing to exercise their First Amendment rights on the premises in a manner and for a purpose generally consonant with the use to which the property is actually put....

It is therefore clear that the restraints on picketing and trespassing approved by the Pennsylvania courts here substantially hinder the communication of the ideas which petitioners seek to express to the patrons of Weis. The fact that the nonspeech aspects of petitioners' activity are also rendered less effective is not particularly compelling in light of the absence of any showing, or reliance by the state courts thereon, that the patrolling accompanying the picketing sought to be carried on was significantly interfering with the use to which the mall property was being put by both respondents and the general public. As we observed earlier, the mere fact that speech is accompanied by conduct does not mean that the speech can be suppressed under the guise of prohibiting the conduct. Here it is perfectly clear that a prohibition against trespass on the mall operates to bar all speech within the shopping center to which respondents object. Yet this Court stated many years ago, "One is not to have the exercise of his liberty of expression in appropriate places abridged on the plea that it may be exercised in some other place."

The sole justification offered for the substantial interference with the effectiveness of petitioners' exercise of their First Amendment rights to promulgate their views through handbilling and picketing is respondents' claimed absolute right under state law to prohibit any use of their property by others without their consent. However, unlike a situation involving a person's home, no meaningful claim to protection of a right of privacy can be advanced by respondents here. Nor on the facts of the case can any significant claim to protection of the normal business operation of the property be raised. Naked title is essentially all that is at issue.

The economic development of the United States in the last 20 years reinforces our opinion of the correctness of the approach taken in Marsh. The large-scale movement of this country's population from the cities to the suburbs has been accompanied by the advent of the suburban shopping center, typically a cluster of individual retail units on a single large privately owned tract. It has been estimated that by the end of 1966 there were between 10,000 and 11,000 shopping centers in the United States and Canada, accounting for approximately 37% of the total retail sales in those two countries.

These figures illustrate the substantial consequences for workers seeking to challenge substandard working conditions, consumers protesting shoddy or overpriced merchandise, and minority groups seeking nondiscriminatory hiring policies that a contrary decision here would have. Business enterprises located in downtown areas would be subject to on-the-spot public criticism for their practices, but businesses situated in the suburbs could largely immunize themselves from similar criticism by creating a cordon sanitaire of parking lots around their stores. Neither precedent nor policy compels a result so at variance with the goal of free expression and communication that is the heart of the First Amendment.

Therefore, as to the sufficiency of respondents' ownership of the Logan Valley Mall premises as the sole support of the injunction issued against petitioners, we simply repeat what was said in Marsh v. Alabama,  "Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his 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." Logan Valley Mall is the functional equivalent of a "business block" and for First Amendment purposes must be treated in substantially the same manner.

The judgment of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is reversed and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

MR. JUSTICE BLACK, dissenting.

I would hold that the entire injunction is valid. With the exception of the Weis property, the land on which this shopping center is located is owned by respondent Logan Valley Plaza, Inc. Logan has improved its property by putting shops and parking spaces thereon for the use of business customers. Now petitioners contend that they can come onto Logan's property for the purpose of picketing and refuse to leave when asked, and that Logan cannot use state trespass laws to keep them out. The majority of this Court affirms petitioners' contentions. But I cannot accept them, for I believe that, whether this Court likes it or not, the Constitution recognizes and supports the concept of private ownership of property. The Fifth Amendment provides that "no person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." This means to me that there is no right to picket on the private premises of another to try to convert the owner or others to the views of the pickets. It also means, I think, that if this Court is going to arrogate to itself the power to act as the Government's agent to take a part of Weis' property to give to the pickets for their use, the Court should also award Weis just compensation for the property taken.

In  affirming petitioners' contentions the majority opinion relies on Marsh v. Alabama, and holds that respondents' property has been transformed to some type of public property. But Marsh was never intended to apply to this kind of situation. Marsh dealt with the very special situation of a company-owned town, complete with streets, alleys, sewers, stores, residences, and everything else that goes to make a town. Toward the end of the opinion we emphasized that "the town of Chickasaw does not function differently from any other town." I think it is fair to say that the basis on which the Marsh decision rested was that the property involved encompassed an area that for all practical purposes had been turned into a town; the area had all the attributes of a town and was exactly like any other town in Alabama. I can find very little resemblance between the shopping center involved in this case and Chickasaw, Alabama. There are no homes, there is no sewage disposal plant, there is not even a post office on this private property which the Court now considers the equivalent of a "town." Indeed, at the time this injunction was issued, there were only two stores on the property. Now there are supposed to be about 17, but they are all conceded to be "commercial establishments." The remainder of the property in the center has been laid out as a large parking lot with individually marked parking spaces provided for business customers. All I can say is that this sounds like a very strange "town" to me....

MR. JUSTICE WHITE, dissenting.

It is not clear how the Court might draw a line between "shopping centers" and other business establishments which have sidewalks or parking on their own property. Any store invites the patronage of members of the public interested in its products. I am fearful that the Court's decision today will be a license for pickets to leave the public streets and carry out their activities on private property, as long as they are not obstructive. I do not agree that when the owner of private property invites the public to do business with him he impliedly dedicates his property for other uses as well. I do not think the First Amendment, which bars only official interferences with speech, has this reach. In Marsh, the company ran an entire town and the State was deemed to have devolved upon the company the task of carrying out municipal functions. But here the "streets" of Logan Valley Plaza are not like public streets; they are not used as thoroughfares for general travel from point to point, for general parking, for meetings, or for Easter parades....

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