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HUDGENS V. NLRB, 424 U. S. 507 (1976) - US SUPREME COURT DECISIONS ON-LINE
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STEWART, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C.J.,and BLACKMUN, POWELL, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
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.
A group of labor union members who engaged in peaceful primary picketing within the confines of a privately owned shopping center were threatened by an agent of the owner with arrest for criminal trespass if they did not depart. The question presented is whether this threat violated the National Labor Relations Act, 49 Stat. 449, as amended 61 Stat. 136, 29 U.S.C. 151 et seq. The National Labor Relations Board concluded that it did, 205 N.L.R.B. 628, and the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed. 501 F.2d 161. We granted certiorari because of the seemingly important questions of federal law presented. 420 U.S. 971. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The union subsequently filed with the Board an unfair labor practice charge against Hudgens, alleging interference with rights protected by § 7 of the Act, 29 chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The Board, in turn, remanded to an Administrative Law Judge, who made findings of fact, recommendations, and conclusions to the effect that Hudgens had committed an unfair labor practice by excluding the pickets. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Hudgens again petitioned for review in the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and there the Board changed its tack and urged that the case was controlled not by Babcock & Wilcox, but by Republic Aviation Corp. v. NLRB, 324 U. S. 793 a case which held that an employer commits an unfair labor practice if he enforces a no-solicitation rule against employees on his premises who are also union organizers, unless he can prove that the rule is necessitated by special circumstances. The Court of Appeals enforced the Board's cease and desist order, but on the basis of yet another theory. While acknowledging that the source of the pickets' rights was § 7 of the Act, the Court of Appeals held that the competing constitutional and property right considerations discussed in Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, supra, "burde[n] the General Counsel with the duty to chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
prove that other locations less intrusive upon Hudgens' property rights than picketing inside the mall were either unavailable or ineffective," 501 F.2d 169, and that the Board's General Counsel had met that burden in this case.
As the above recital discloses, the history of this litigation has been a history of shifting positions on the part of the litigants, the Board, and the Court of Appeal. It has been a history, in short, of considerable confusion, engendered at least in part by decisions of this Court that intervened during the course of the litigation. In the present posture of the case, the most basic question is whether the respective rights and liabilities of the parties are to be decided under the criteria of the National Labor Relations Act alone, under a First Amendment standard, or under some combination of the two. It is to that question, accordingly, that we now turn. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
It was the Marsh case that, in 1968 provided the foundation for the Court's decision in Amalgamated Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U. S. 308. That case involved peaceful picketing within a large chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The Court's opinion then reviewed the Marsh case in detail, emphasized the similarities between the business chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
326 U.S. at 326 U. S. 502. I chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The Court in its Lloyd opinion did not say that it was overruling the Logan Valley decision. Indeed, a substantial portion of the Court's opinion in Lloyd was devoted to pointing out the differences between the two cases, noting particularly that, in contrast to the handbilling in Lloyd, the picketing in Logan Valley had been chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Id. at 407 U. S. 568-569 (footnote omitted). chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Police Dept. of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U. S. 92, 408 U. S. 95. [Footnote 9] It conversely follows, therefore, that, if the respondents in the Lloyd case did not have a First Amendment right to enter that shopping center to distribute handbills concerning Vietnam, then the pickets in the present case did not have a First Amendment chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Both Central Hardware and Babcock & Wilcox involved organizational activity carried on by nonemployees on the employers' property. [Footnote 10] The context of the § 7 chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The Babcock & Wilcox opinion established the basic objective under the Act: accommodation of § 7 rights and private property rights "with as little destruction of one as is consistent with the maintenance of the other." [Footnote 12] The locus of that accommodation, however, may fall at differing points along the spectrum depending on the nature and strength of the respective § 7 rights and private property rights asserted in any given context. In each generic situation, the primary responsibility for making this accommodation must rest with the Board in the first instance. See NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox, supra at 351 U. S. 112; cf. NLRB v. Erie Resistor Corp., supra at 373 U. S. 235-236; chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The law in this area, particularly with respect to whether First Amendment or labor law principles are applicable, has been less than clear since Logan Valley analogized a shopping center to the "company town" in Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U. S. 501 (1946). Mr. Justice Black, the author of the Court's opinion in Marsh, thought the decisions were irreconcilable. [Footnote 2/1] I now agree chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The Court today holds that the First Amendment poses no bar to a shopping center owner's prohibiting speech within his shopping center. After deciding this far-reaching constitutional question, and overruling Food chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The Court views the history of this litigation as one of "shifting positions" and "considerable confusion." To be sure, the Board's position has not been constant. But the ultimate decisions by the Administrative Law Judge chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
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. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The Court acknowledges that the Court of Appeals' enforcement of the Board's order was based on its view of the employees' § 7 rights. But the Court suggests that the following reference to Lloyd, a constitutional chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
501 F.2d 167. With that explanation of the Court of Appeals' view of the relevance of Lloyd, it is evident that the subsequent reference to Lloyd, quoted out of context by the Court, was not intended to alter the purely statutory basis of the Court of Appeals' decision. [Footnote 3/4]
In short, the Board's decision was clearly unaffected by constitutional considerations, and I do not read the Court of Appeals' opinion as intimating that its statutory result was constitutionally mandated. In its present posture, the case presents no constitutional question to the Court. Surely it is of no moment that the Board, through its counsel, now urges this Court to decide, as part of its statutory analysis, what result is compelled by the First Amendment. The posture of the case is determined by the decisions of the Board and the Court of Appeals, not by the arguments advanced in the Board's brief. Since I read those decisions as purely statutory ones, I would proceed to consider the purely statutory question whether, assuming that petitioner is not restricted by the First Amendment, his actions nevertheless chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
As already indicated, the Board, through its counsel, urges the Court to apply First Amendment considerations in defining the scope of § 7 of the Act. The Board takes this position because it is concerned that the scope of § 7 not fall short of the scope of the First Amendment, the result of which would be that picketing employees could obtain greater protection by court suits than by invoking the procedures of the NLRA. While that general concern is a legitimate one, it does not justify the constitutional adjudication undertaken by the Court. If it were undisputed that the pickets in this case enjoyed some degree of First Amendment protection against interference by petitioner, it might be difficult to separate a consideration of the scope of that First Amendment protection from an analysis of the scope of chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
On the merits of the purely statutory question that I believe is presented to the Court, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals. To do so, one need not consider whether consumer picketing by employees is subject to a more permissive test under § 7 than the test articulated in Babcock & Wilcox for organizational activity by nonemployees. In Babcock & Wilcox we stated that an employer "must allow the union to approach his employees on his property" [Footnote 3/5] if the employees are "beyond the reach of reasonable efforts to communicate with them," 351 U.S. at 351 U. S. 113 -- that is, if "other means" of communication are not "readily available." Id. at 351 U. S. 114. Thus, the general standard that emerges chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
501 F.2d 168. Petitioner contends that the employees could have utilized the newspapers, radio, television, direct mail, handbills, and billboards to reach the citizenry of Atlanta. But none of those means is likely to be as effective as on-location picketing: the initial impact of communication by those means would likely be less dramatic, and the potential for dilution of impact significantly greater. As this Court has observed:
Hughes v. Superior Court, 339 U. S. 460, 339 U. S. 465 (1950). chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
In short, I believe the Court of Appeals was clearly correct in concluding that "alternatives to picketing inside the mall were either unavailable or inadequate." 501 F.2d 169. Under Babcock & Wilcox, then, the picketing in this case was protected by § 7. I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals on that basis.
Turning to the constitutional issue resolved by the Court, I cannot escape the feeling that Logan Valley has been laid to rest without ever having been accorded a proper burial. The Court today announces that "the ultimate holding in Lloyd amounted to a total rejection chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Lloyd involved the distribution of anti-war handbills in a large shopping center, and while some of us viewed chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Any doubt about the limited scope of Lloyd is removed completely by a consideration of Central Hardware Co. v. NLRB, 407 U. S. 539 (1972), decided the same day as Lloyd. In Central Hardware, the Court was faced with solicitation by nonemployee union organizers on a parking lot of a retail store that was not part of a shopping center complex -- activity clearly related to the use to which the private property had been put. The Court found the activity unprotected by the First Amendment, but in a way that explicitly preserved the holding in Logan Valley. The Court could have held that the First Amendment has no application to use-related activity on privately owned business property, thereby rejecting Logan Valley, but, instead, the Court chose to chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
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. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
In Logan Valley we recognized what the Court today refuses to recognize -- that the owner of the modern shopping center complex, by dedicating his property to public use as a business district, to some extent displaces the "State" from control of historical First Amendment forums, and may acquire a virtual monopoly of places suitable for effective communication. The roadways, parking lots, and walkways of the modern shopping center chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
In Marsh, the private entity had displaced the "state" from control of all the places to which the public had historically enjoyed access for First Amendment purposes, and the First Amendment was accordingly held fully applicable to the private entity's conduct. The shopping center owner, on the other hand, controls only chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
The Court's only apparent objection to this analysis is that it makes the applicability of the First Amendment turn to some degree on the subject matter of the speech. But that, in itself is no objection, and the cases cited by the Court to the effect that government may not "restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content," Police Dept. of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U. S. 92, 408 U. S. 95 (1972), are simply inapposite. In those cases, it was clearly the government that was acting, and the First Amendment's bar against infringing speech was unquestionably applicable; the Court simply held that the government, faced with a general command to permit speech, cannot choose to forbid some speech because of its message. The shopping center cases are quite different; in these cases, the primary regulator is a private entity whose property has "assume[d] to some significant degree the functional attributes of public property devoted to public use." Central Hardware Co. v. NLRB, 407 U.S. at 407 U. S. 547. The very question in these cases is whether, and under what circumstances, the First Amendment has any application at all. The answer to that question, under the view of Marsh described above, depends to some extent on the subject of the speech the private entity seeks to regulate, because the degree to which the private entity monopolizes the effective channels of communication chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
In the final analysis, the Court's rejection of any role for the First Amendment in the privately owned shopping center complex stems, I believe, from an overly formalistic view of the relationship between the institution of private ownership of property and the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. No one would seriously question the legitimacy of the values of privacy and individual autonomy traditionally associated with privately owned property. But property that is privately owned is not always held for private use, and when a property owner opens his property to public use, the force of those values diminishes. A degree of privacy is necessarily surrendered; thus, the privacy interest that petitioner retains when he leases space to 60 retail businesses and invites the public onto his land for the transaction of business with other members of the public is small indeed. Cf. Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U. S. 49, 413 U. S. 667 (1973). And while the owner of property open to public use may not automatically surrender any of his autonomy interest in managing the property as he sees fit, there is nothing new about the notion that that autonomy interest must be accommodated with the interests of the public. As chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Indeed, the Court of Appeals quite clearly viewed the Administrative Law Judge's recommendation and the Board's decision as statutorily based. And the court did not even make the factual finding of functional equivalence to a business district that it recognized as a prerequisite to the application of the First Amendment. 501 F.2d 164.