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Page Number: 35.0

16  MANHATTAN COMMUNITY ACCESS CORP. v. HALLECK 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

ante, at 12–13.  The same rule holds, of course, for private 
comedy clubs and grocery stores.  See ante, at 9.11 
  The  Jackson  line  of  cases  is  inapposite  here.    MNN  is 
not a private entity that simply ventured into the market-
place.  It occupies its role because it was asked to do so by 
the  City,  which  secured  the  public-access  channels  in 
exchange for giving up public rights of way, opened those 
channels  up  (as  required  by  the  State)  as  a  public  forum, 
and  then  deputized  MNN  to  administer  them.    That  dis-
tinguishes MNN from a private entity that simply sets up 
shop against a regulatory backdrop.  To say that MNN is 
nothing more than a private organization regulated by the 
government is like saying that a waiter at a restaurant is 
—————— 

11 There was a time when this Court’s precedents may have portended 
the  kind  of  First  Amendment  liability  for  purely  private  property 
owners that the majority spends so much time rejecting.  See Marsh v. 
Alabama,  326  U. S.  501,  505–509  (1946)  (treating  a  company-owned 
town  as  subject  to  the  First  Amendment);  Food  Employees  v.  Logan 
Valley Plaza, Inc., 391 U. S. 308, 315–320, and n. 9, 325 (1968) (extend-
ing  Marsh  to  cover  a  private  shopping  center  to  the  extent  that  it 
sought  to  restrict  speech  about  its  businesses).    But  the  Court  soon 
stanched that trend.  See Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U. S. 551, 561–567 
(1972) (cabining Marsh and refusing to extend Logan Valley); Hudgens 
v. NLRB, 424 U. S. 507, 518 (1976) (making clear that “the rationale of 
Logan Valley did not survive” Lloyd).  Ever since, this Court has been 
reluctant to find a “public function” when it comes to “private commer-
cial  transactions”  (even  if  they  occur  against  a  legal  or  regulatory 
backdrop), see, e.g., Flagg Bros., Inc. v. Brooks, 436 U. S. 149, 161–163 
(1978), instead requiring a closer connection between the private entity 
and  a  government  or  its  agents,  see,  e.g.,  Brentwood  Academy  v.  Ten-
nessee  Secondary  School  Athletic  Assn.,  531  U. S.  288,  298  (2001) 
(nonprofit interscholastic athletic association “pervasive[ly] entwine[d]” 
with governmental institutions and officials); Lugar v. Edmondson Oil 
Co.,  457  U. S.  922,  942  (1982)  (state-created  system  “whereby  state 
officials [would] attach property on the ex parte application of one party 
to a private dispute”); see also Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 
365 U. S. 715, 723–725 (1961) (restaurant in municipal parking garage 
partly maintained by municipal agency); accord, ante, at 6–7.  Jackson 
exemplifies the line of cases that supplanted cases like Logan Valley—
not cases like this one.