Ric in Richmond
Member
- Joined
- May 23, 2006
- Messages
- 92
So do you think they would have said the same thing about the Second Amendment???
Does this mean NO ONE can ban a handgun from pricate property? (yeah...just kidding ...I know better!!)
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/12/26/ca-supremes-give-free-speech-rights-on-private-property/
CA Supremes Give Free Speech Rights on Private Property
Posted by Peter Lattman
If someone had asked us last week, “Hey Law Blog, can a San Diego shopping mall stop protestors from demonstrating there to urge a boycott of one of its tenants?,” we’d have said, “Of course! A mall is private property, so the owner can do what it pleases.”
We would’ve been wrong. In a 4-3 nailbiter, the California Supreme Court upheld a decades-old precedent protecting free speech rights at shopping centers, even if the malls are privately owned. Here is the 46-page ruling, and stories from the LA Times, NYT, and San Diego Union-Tribune.
The facts: In 1998, in the midst of a contract dispute between the San Diego Union-Tribune and its pressroom union, dozens of union members stood in front of a Robinsons-May store — one of the paper’s big advertisers — to discourage people from shopping there. Mall officials told them to scram. (Law Blog Reading Recommendation: Click here for an Economist article this week on the death of the shopping mall.)
Justice Moreno said while the mall could regulate protests, it couldn’t regulate the content of their speech. “They may not prohibit certain types of speech based upon its content, such as prohibiting speech that urges a boycott of one or more of the stores in the mall.”
In dissent, Justice Chin said the court was treating private property as a “public free speech zone.” “A shopping center exists for the individual businesses on the premises to do business,” he wrote. “Urging a boycott of those businesses contradicts the very purpose of the shopping center’s existence.”
UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh told the LAT that his state and a few others back free speech at large malls on the theory that they function as modern-day town squares. “That’s where people congregate these days, and that’s where it’s important that free speech be protected.”
O beloved Law Blog readers, should there be free speech rights on private property?
Does this mean NO ONE can ban a handgun from pricate property? (yeah...just kidding ...I know better!!)
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/12/26/ca-supremes-give-free-speech-rights-on-private-property/
CA Supremes Give Free Speech Rights on Private Property
Posted by Peter Lattman
If someone had asked us last week, “Hey Law Blog, can a San Diego shopping mall stop protestors from demonstrating there to urge a boycott of one of its tenants?,” we’d have said, “Of course! A mall is private property, so the owner can do what it pleases.”
We would’ve been wrong. In a 4-3 nailbiter, the California Supreme Court upheld a decades-old precedent protecting free speech rights at shopping centers, even if the malls are privately owned. Here is the 46-page ruling, and stories from the LA Times, NYT, and San Diego Union-Tribune.
The facts: In 1998, in the midst of a contract dispute between the San Diego Union-Tribune and its pressroom union, dozens of union members stood in front of a Robinsons-May store — one of the paper’s big advertisers — to discourage people from shopping there. Mall officials told them to scram. (Law Blog Reading Recommendation: Click here for an Economist article this week on the death of the shopping mall.)
Justice Moreno said while the mall could regulate protests, it couldn’t regulate the content of their speech. “They may not prohibit certain types of speech based upon its content, such as prohibiting speech that urges a boycott of one or more of the stores in the mall.”
In dissent, Justice Chin said the court was treating private property as a “public free speech zone.” “A shopping center exists for the individual businesses on the premises to do business,” he wrote. “Urging a boycott of those businesses contradicts the very purpose of the shopping center’s existence.”
UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh told the LAT that his state and a few others back free speech at large malls on the theory that they function as modern-day town squares. “That’s where people congregate these days, and that’s where it’s important that free speech be protected.”
O beloved Law Blog readers, should there be free speech rights on private property?