Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/424/507/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 04:27:36+00:00

Document:
The First Amendment does not protect picketing a store in a private shopping center.
The general manager of a shopping center owned by Hudgens intervened in a picketing activity by employees of a store in the shopping center. As members of a union who were on strike, they were picketing in front of the store. They left when the shopping center manager warned them that they could be arrested for criminal trespass. However, the union brought charges against the shopping center for unfair labor practices, arguing that it had interfered with rights protected by the National Labor Relations Act. The National Labor Relations Board agreed and issued a cease-and-desist order against the shopping center, which the court of appeals enforced.
Hudgens and the union argued that the standard set by the NLRA should decide the case, while the NLRB argued that the First Amendment applied to the situation.
The related decision in Amalgamated Food Employees Union Local 590 v. Logan Valley Plaza, Inc. (1968) is overturned. A private shopping center cannot be subject to the First Amendment, and private parties are not prevented from restricting the free speech of others who are on their property.
A mall is a private actor, so the First Amendment does not apply, as it would to a company town. This case sought to overrule a conflict between the Court's own precedents.
1. Under the present state of the law, the constitutional guarantee of free expression has no part to play in a case such as this, and the pickets here did not have a First Amendment right to enter the shopping center for the purpose of advertising their strike against their employer. Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U. S. 551. Pp. 424 U. S. 512-521.
2. The rights and liabilities of the parties are dependent exclusively upon the NLRA, under which it is the NLRB's task, subject to judicial review, to resolve conflicts between § 7 rights and private property rights and to seek accommodation of such rights "with as little destruction of one as is consistent with the maintenance of the other," NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U. S. 105, 351 U. S. 112. Hence, the case is remanded so that the NLRB may reconsider the case under the NLRA's statutory criteria alone. Pp. 424 U. S. 521-523.
POWELL, filed a concurring opinion, in which BURGER, C.J., joined, post, p. 424 U. S. 523. WHITE, J., filed an opinion concurring in the result, post, p. 424 U. S. 524. MARSHALL, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BRENNAN, J., joined, post, p. 424 U. S. 525. STEVENS, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
In January, 1971, warehouse employees of the Butler Shoe Co. went on strike to protest the company's failure to agree to demands made by their union in contract negotiations. [Footnote 1] The strikers decided to picket not only Butler's warehouse, but its nine retail stores in the Atlanta area as well, including the store in the North DeKalb Shopping Center. On January 22, 1971, four of the striking warehouse employees entered the center's enclosed mall carrying placards which read: "Butler Shoe Warehouse on Strike, AFL-CIO, Local 315." The general manager of the shopping center informed the employees that they could not picket within the mall or on the parking lot and threatened them with arrest if they did not leave. The employees departed, but returned a short time later and began picketing in an area of the mall immediately adjacent to the entrances of the Butler store. After the picketing had continued for approximately 30 minutes, the shopping center manager again informed the pickets that, if they did not leave, they would be arrested for trespassing. The pickets departed.
U.S.C. § 157. [Footnote 2] Relying on this Court's decision in Food Employees v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U. S. 308, the Board entered a cease and desist order against Hudgens, reasoning that, because the warehouse employees enjoyed a First Amendment right to picket on the shopping center property, the owner's threat of arrest violated § 8(a)(1) of the Act, 29 U.S.C. § 15,8(a)(1). [Footnote 3] Hudgens filed a petition for review in the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Soon thereafter this Court decided Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U. S. 551, and Central Hardware Co. v. NLRB, 407 U. S. 539, and the Court of Appeals remanded the case to the Board for reconsideration in light of those two decisions.
It is, of course, a commonplace that the constitutional guarantee of free speech is a guarantee only against abridgment by government, federal or state. See Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. Democratic National Comm., 412 U. S. 94. Thus, while statutory or common law may in some situations extend protection or provide redress against a private corporation or person who seeks to abridge the free expression of others, no such protection or redress is provided by the Constitution itself.
Id. at 326 U. S. 502-503.
Id. at 326 U. S. 504. Concluding that Gulf's "property interests" should not be allowed to lead to a different result in Chickasaw, which did "not function differently from any other town," id. at 326 U. S. 506 508, the Court invoked the First and Fourteenth Amendments to reverse the appellant's conviction.
391 U.S. at 391 U. S. 315.
391 U.S. at 391 U. S. 318. Upon the basis of that conclusion, the Court held that the First and Fourteenth Amendments required reversal of the judgment of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
391 U.S. at 391 U. S. 330-331 (footnote omitted).
Id. at 391 U. S. 332.
Id. at 391 U. S. 332-333.
Four years later, the Court had occasion to reconsider the Logan Valley doctrine in Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U. S. 551. That case involved a shopping center covering some 50 acres in downtown Portland, Ore. On a November day in 1968, five young people entered the mall of the shopping center and distributed handbills protesting the then ongoing American military operations in Vietnam. Security guards told them to leave, and they did so, "to avoid arrest." Id. at 407 U. S. 556. They subsequently brought suit in a Federal District Court, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. The trial court ruled in their favor, holding that the distribution of handbills on the shopping center's property was protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the judgment, 446 F.2d 545, expressly relying on this Court's Marsh and Logan Valley decisions. This Court reversed the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
specifically directed to a store in the shopping center, and the pickets had had no other reasonable opportunity to reach their intended audience. 407 U.S. at 407 U. S. 561-567. [Footnote 5] But the fact is that the reasoning of the Court's opinion in Lloyd cannot be squared with the reasoning of the Court's opinion in Logan Valley.
407 U.S. at 407 U. S. 567.
Id. at 407 U. S. 568-569 (footnote omitted).
Id. at 407 U. S. 570.
If a large self-contained shopping center is the functional equivalent of a municipality, as Logan Valley held, then the First and Fourteenth Amendments would not permit control of speech within such a center to depend upon the speech's content. [Footnote 8] For while a municipality may constitutionally impose reasonable time, place, and manner regulations on the use of its streets and sidewalks for First Amendment purposes, see Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U. S. 569; Poulos v. New Hampshire, 345 U. S. 395, and may even forbid altogether such use of some of its facilities, see Adderley v. Florida, 385 U. S. 39, what a municipality may not do under the First and Fourteenth Amendments is to discriminate in the regulation of expression on the basis of the content of that expression, Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville, 422 U. S. 205.
From what has been said, it follows that the rights and liabilities of the parties in this case are dependent exclusively upon the National Labor Relations Act. Under the Act, the task of the Board, subject to review by the courts, is to resolve conflicts between § 7 rights and private property rights, "and to seek a proper accommodation between the two." Central Hardware Co. v. NLRB, 407 U.S. at 407 U. S. 543. What is "a proper accommodation" in any situation may largely depend upon the content and the context of the § 7 rights being asserted. The task of the Board and the reviewing courts under the Act, therefore, stands in conspicuous contrast to the duty of a court in applying the standards of the First Amendment, which requires, "above all else," that expression must not be restricted by government "because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content."
In the Central Hardware case, and earlier in the case of NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U. S. 105, the Court considered the nature of the Board's task in this area under the Act. Accommodation between employees' § 7 rights and employers' property rights, the Court said in Babcock & Wilcox, "must be obtained with as little destruction of one as is consistent with the maintenance of the other." 351 U.S. at 351 U. S. 112.
NLRB v. Truckdrivers Union, 353 U. S. 87, 353 U. S. 97. "The responsibility to adapt the Act to changing patterns of industrial life is entrusted to the Board." NLRB v. Weingarten, Inc., 420 U. S. 251, 420 U. S. 266.
"The principal differences between the two centers are that the Lloyd Center is larger than Logan Valley, that Lloyd Center contains more commercial facilities, that Lloyd Center contains a range of professional and nonprofessional services that were not found in Logan Valley, and that Lloyd Center is much more intertwined with public streets than Logan Valley. Also, as in Marsh, supra, Lloyd's private police are given full police power by the city of Portland, even though they are hired, fired, controlled, and paid by the owners of the Center. This was not true in Logan Valley."
This was the entire thrust of MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL's dissenting opinion in the Lloyd case. See id. at 407 U. S. 584.
MR. JUSTICE WHITE clearly recognized this principle in his Logan Valley dissenting opinion. 391 U.S. at 391 U. S. 339.
The Court has in the past held that some expression is not protected "speech" within the meaning of the First Amendment. Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476; Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U. S. 568.
A wholly different balance was struck when the organizational activity was carried on by employees already rightfully on the employer's property, since the employer's management interests, rather than his property interests, were there involved. Republic Aviation Corp. v. NLRB, 324 U. S. 793. This difference is "one of substance." NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U.S. at 351 U. S. 113.
351 U.S. at 351 U. S. 112. This language was explicitly reaffirmed as stating "the guiding principle" in Central Hardware Co. v. NLRB, 407 U. S. 539, 407 U. S. 544.
"Marsh was never intended to apply to this kind of situation. . . . [T]he 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."
391 U.S. at 391 U. S. 330, 331.
While I concur in the result reached by the Court, I find it unnecessary to inter Food Employees v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U. S. 308 (1968), and therefore do not join the Court's opinion. I agree that "the constitutional guarantee of free expression has no part to play in a case such as this," ante at 424 U. S. 521; but Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U. S. 551 (1972), did not overrule Logan Valley, either expressly or implicitly, and I would not, somewhat after the fact, say that it did.
The First Amendment question in this case was left open in Logan Valley. I dissented in Logan Valley, 391 U.S. p. 391 U. S. 337, and I see no reason to extend it further. Without such extension, the First Amendment provides no protection for the picketing here in issue, and the Court need say no more. Lloyd v. Tanner is wholly consistent with this view. There is no need belatedly to overrule Logan Valley, only to follow it as it is.
In explaining why it addresses any constitutional issue at all, the Court observes simply that the history of the litigation has been one of "shifting positions on the part of the litigants, the Board, and the Court of Appeals," ante at 424 U. S. 512, as to whether relief was being sought, or granted, under the First Amendment, under § 7 of the Act, or under some combination of the two. On my reading, the Court of Appeals' decision and, even more clearly, the Board's decision here for review, were based solely on § 7, not on the First Amendment; and this Court ought initially consider the statutory question without reference to the First Amendment -- the question on which the Court remands. But even under the Court's reading of the opinions of the Board and the Court of Appeals, the statutory question on which it remands is now before the Court. By bypassing that question and reaching out to overrule a constitutionally based decision, the Court surely departs from traditional modes of adjudication.
Lloyd and Central Hardware demonstrated, each in its own way, that Logan Valley could not be read as broadly as some Courts of Appeals had read it. And together they gave a signal to the Board and to the Court of Appeals that it would be wise to pass upon statutory contentions in cases of this sort before turning to broad constitutional questions, the answers to which could no longer be predicted with certainty. See Central Hardware, supra at 407 U. S. 548, 407 U. S. 549 (MARSHALL, J., dissenting); Lloyd, supra at 584 (MARSHALL, J., dissenting). Taking heed of this signal, the Administrative Law Judge and the Board proceeded on remand to assess the conflicting rights of the employees and the shopping center owner within the framework of the NLRA. The Administrative Law Judge's recommendation that petitioner be found guilty of a 8(a)(1) violation rested explicitly on the statutory test enunciated by this Court in NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U. S. 105 (1956). That the Administrative Law Judge supported his "realistic view of the facts" by referring to this Court's "factual view" of the Logan Valley case surely cannot be said to alter the judge's explicitly stated legal theory, which was a statutory one.
Even more clearly, the Board's rationale in agreeing with the Administrative Law Judge's recommendation was exclusively a statutory one. Nowhere in the Board's decision, Hudgens v. Local 1, Retail, Wholesale & Dept. Store Union, 205 N.L.R.B. 628 (1973), is there any reference to the First Amendment or any constitutionally based decision. The Board reached its result "for the reasons specifically set forth in Frank Visceglia and Vincent Visceglia, t/a Peddie Buildings," [Footnote 3/1] ibid., a case decided solely on § 7 grounds. In Visceglia, the Board had specifically declined to treat the picketing area in question as the functional equivalent of a business block, and rejected the applicability of Logan Valley's First Amendment analysis, finding an interference with § 7 rights under a "modified" Babcock & Wilcox test. [Footnote 3/2] When the Board in this case relied upon the rationale of Visceglia, it was evidently proceeding under the assumption that the First Amendment had no application. Its ultimate conclusion that petitioner violated § 8(a)(1) of the Act was purely the result of an "accommodation between [his] property rights and the employees' Section 7 rights." 205 N.L.R.B. 628.
"Lloyd burdens the General Counsel with the duty to prove that other locations less intrusive upon Hudgens' property rights than picketing inside the mall were either unavailable or ineffective."
At the very least, it is clear that neither the Board nor the Court of Appeals decided the case solely on First Amendment grounds. The Court itself acknowledges that both decisions were based on § 7. The most that can be said, and all that the Court suggests, is that the Court of Appeals' view of § 7 was colored by the First Amendment. But even if that were the case, this Court ought not decide any First Amendment question -- particularly in a way that requires overruling one of our decisions -- without first considering the statutory question without reference to the First Amendment. It is a well established principle that constitutional questions should not be decided unnecessarily. See, e.g., Hagans v. Lavine, 415 U. S. 528, 415 U. S. 543, 549 (1974); Rosenberg v. Fleuti, 374 U. S. 449 (1963); Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U. S. 288, 297 U. S. 346-347 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring). If the Court of Appeals disregarded that principle, that is no excuse for this Court's doing so.
Hughes v. Superior Court, 339 U. S. 460, 339 U. S. 465 (1950).
In addition, all of the alternatives suggested by petitioner are considerably more expensive than on-site picketing. Certainly Babcock & Wilcox did not require resort to the mass media, [Footnote 3/6] or to more individualized efforts on a scale comparable to that which would be required to reach the intended audience in this case.
of the holding in Logan Valley." Ante at 424 U. S. 518. To be sure, some Members of the Court, myself included, believed that Logan Valley called for a different result in Lloyd and alluded in dissent to the possibility that "it is Logan Valley itself that the Court finds bothersome." 407 U.S. at 407 U. S. 570, 407 U. S. 584 (MARSHALL, J., dissenting). But the fact remains that Logan Valley explicitly reserved the question later decided in Lloyd, and Lloyd carefully preserved the holding of Logan Valley. And upon reflection, I am of the view that the two decisions are reconcilable.
the case differently, 407 U.S. at 407 U. S. 570, 577-579 (MARSHALL, J., dissenting), the Court treated it as presenting the question left open in Logan Valley. But the Court did no more than decide that question. It preserved the holding of Logan Valley, as limited to cases in which (1) the picketing is directly related in its purpose to the use to which the shopping center property is put, and (2) "no other reasonable opportunities for the pickets to convey their message to their intended audience [are] available." 407 U.S. at 407 U. S. 563.
"Before an owner of private property can be subjected to the commands of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the privately owned property must assume to some significant degree the functional attributes of public property devoted to public use. . . The only fact relied upon for the argument that Central's parking lots have acquired the characteristics of a public municipal facility is that they are 'open to the public.' Such an argument could be made with respect to almost every retail and service establishment in the country, regardless of size or location. To accept it would cut Logan Valley entirely away from its roots in Marsh."
407 U.S. at 407 U. S. 547 (footnote omitted). If, as the Court tells us, "the rationale of Logan Valley did not survive the Court's decision in the Lloyd case," ante at 424 U. S. 518, one wonders why the Court in Central Hardware, decided the same day as Lloyd, implicitly reaffirmed Logan Valley's rationale.
The foundation of Logan Valley consisted of this Court's decisions recognizing a right of access to streets, sidewalks, parks, and other public places historically associated with the exercise of First Amendment rights. E.g., Hague v. CIO, 307 U. S. 496, 307 U. S. 515-516 (1939) (opinion of Roberts, J.); Schneider v. State, 308 U. S. 147 (1939); Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 310 U. S. 308 (1940); Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U. S. 569, 312 U. S. 574 (1941); Jamison v. Texas, 318 U. S. 413 (1943); Saia v. New York, 334 U. S. 558 (1948). Thus, the Court in Logan Valley observed that access to such forums "cannot constitutionally be denied broadly and absolutely." 391 U.S. at 391 U. S. 315. The importance of access to such places for speech-related purposes is clear, for they are often the only places for effective speech and assembly.
Id. at 326 U. S. 506. Regardless of who owned or possessed the town in Marsh, the Court noted, "the public . . . has an identical interest in the functioning of the community in such manner that the channels of communication remain free," id. at 326 U. S. 507, and that interest was held to prevail.
may be as essential for effective speech as the streets and sidewalks in the municipal or company-owned town. [Footnote 3/7] I simply cannot reconcile the Court's denial of any role for the First Amendment in the shopping center with Marsh's recognition of a full role for the First Amendment on the streets and sidewalks of the company-owned town.
My reading of Marsh admittedly carried me farther than the Court in Lloyd, but the Lloyd Court remained responsive in its own way to the concerns underlying Marsh. Lloyd retained the availability of First Amendment protection when the picketing is related to the function of the shopping center, and when there is no other reasonable opportunity to convey the message to the intended audience. Preserving Logan Valley subject to Lloyd's two related criteria guaranteed that the First Amendment would have application in those situations in which the shopping center owner had most clearly monopolized the forums essential for effective communication. This result, although not the optimal one in my view, Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. at 407 U. S. 579-583 (MARSHALL, J., dissenting), is nonetheless defensible.
may depend upon what subject is involved. [Footnote 3/8] This limited reference to the subject matter of the speech poses none of the dangers of government suppression or censorship that lay at the heart of the cases cited by the Court. See, e.g., Police Dept. of Chicago v. Mosley, supra at 408 U. S. 95-96. It is indeed ironic that those cases, whose obvious concern was the promotion of free speech, are cited today to require its surrender.
Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113, 94 U. S. 126 (1877).
The only alternative means of communication referred to in Babcock & Wilcox were "personal contacts on streets or at home, telephones, letters or advertised meetings to get in touch with the employees." 351 U.S. at 351 U. S. 111.
No point would be served by adding to the observations in Logan Valley and my dissent in Lloyd with respect to the growth of suburban shopping centers and the proliferation of activities taking place in such centers. See Logan Valley, 391 U.S. at 391 U. S. 324; Lloyd, 407 U.S. at 407 U. S. 580, 407 U. S. 585-586. See also Note, Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner: The Demise of Logan Valley and the Disguise of Marsh, 61 Geo.L.J. 1187, 1216-1219 (1973).

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