Source: http://openjurist.org/447/us/74
Timestamp: 2015-08-04 22:23:38
Document Index: 366758410

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1257', '§ 1257', '§ 1257', '§ 1257', 'Art. 1', '§ 2']

447 US 74 Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins | OpenJurist
447 U.S. 74 - Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins Home
447 US 74 Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins 447 U.S. 74
100 S.Ct. 2035
64 L.Ed.2d 741
PRUNEYARD SHOPPING CENTER and Fred Sahadi, Appellants,v.Michael ROBINS et al.
1. This case is properly before this Court as an appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1257(2). A state constitutional provision is a "statute" within the meaning of § 1257(2), and in deciding that the State Constitution gave appellees the right to solicit signatures on appellants' property, the California Supreme Court rejected appellants' claim that recognition of such a right violated their "right to exclude others," a fundamental component of their federally protected property rights. Pp. 79-80.
(a) The reasoning in Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551, 92 S.Ct. 2219, 33 L.Ed.2d 131—which held that the First Amendment does not prevent a private shopping center owner from prohibiting the distribution on center premises of handbills unrelated to the center's operations—does not ex proprio vigore limit a State's authority to exercise it police power or its sovereign right to adopt in its own constitution individual liberties more expansive than those conferred by the Federal Constitution. And a State, in the exercise of its police power, may adopt reasonable restrictions on private property so long as the restrictions do not amount to taking without just compensation or contravene any other federal constitutional provision. Pp. 80-81.
(b) The requirement that appellants permit appellees to exercise state-protected rights of free expression and petition on shopping center property does not amount to an unconstitutional infringement of appellants' property rights under the Taking Clause of the Fifth Amendment, appellants, having failed to demonstrate that the "right to exclude others" is so essential to the use or economic value of their property that the state-authorized limitation of it amounted to a "taking." Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U.S. 164, 100 S.Ct. 383, 62 L.Ed.2d 332, distinguished. And there is no merit to appellants' argument that they have been denied property without due process of law, where they have failed to show that the due process test whereby the challenged law must not be unreasonable, arbitrary, or capricious and the means selected must have a real and substantial relation to the objective to be obtained, is not satisfied by the State's asserted interest in promoting more expansive rights of free speech and petition than conferred by the Federal Constitution. Pp. 82-85.
(c) Nor have appellants' First Amendment rights been infringed by the California Supreme Court's decision. The shopping center by choice of its owner is not limited to the personal use of appellants, and the views expressed by members of the public in passing out pamphlets or seeking signatures for a petition thus will not likely be identified with those of the owner. Furthermore, no specific message is dictated by the State to be displayed on appellants' property, and appellants are free to publicly dissociate themselves from the views of the speakers or handbillers. Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U.S. 705, 97 S.Ct. 1428, 51 L.Ed.2d 752; West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 63 S.Ct. 1178, 87 L.Ed. 1628; and Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241, 94 S.Ct. 2831, 41 L.Ed.2d 730, distinguished. Pp. 85-88.
23 Cal.3d 899, 153 Cal.Rptr. 854, 592 P.2d 341, affirmed.
Max L. Gillam, Jr., Los Angeles, Cal., for appellants.
Philip L. Hammer, San Jose, Cal., for appellees.
We postponed jurisdiction of this appeal from the Supreme Court of California to decide the important federal constitutional questions it presented. Those are whether state constitutional provisions, which permit individuals to exercise free speech and petition rights on the property of a privately owned shopping center to which the public is invited, violate the shopping center owner's property rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments or his free speech rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
* Appellant PruneYard is a privately owned shopping center in the city of Campbell, Cal. It covers approximately 21 acres—5 devoted to parking and 16 occupied by walkways, plazas, sidewalks, and buildings that contain more than 65 specialty shops, 10 restaurants, and a movie theater. The PruneYard is open to the public for the purpose of encouraging the patronizing of its commercial establishments. It has a policy not to permit any visitor or tenant to engage in any publicly expressive activity, including the circulation of petitions, that is not directly related to its commercial purposes. This policy has been strictly enforced in a nondiscriminatory fashion. The PruneYard is owned by appellant Fred Sahadi.
The Superior Court held that appellees were not entitled under either the Federal or California Constitution to exercise their asserted rights on the shopping center property. App. to Juris. Statement A-2. It concluded that there were "adequate, effective channels of communication for [appellees] other than soliciting on the private property of the [PruneYard]." Id. at A-3. The California Court of Appeal affirmed.
The California Supreme Court reversed, holding that the California Constitution protects "speech and petitioning, reasonably exercised, in shopping centers even when the centers are privately owned." 23 Cal.3d 899, 910, 153 Cal.Rptr. 854, 860, 592 P.2d 341, 347 (1979). It concluded that appellees were entitled to conduct their activity on PruneYard property. In rejecting appellants' contention that such a result infringed property rights protected by the Federal Constitution, the California Supreme Court observed:
" 'It bears repeated emphasis that we do not have under consideration the property or privacy rights of an individual homeowner or the proprietor of a modest retail establishment. As a result of advertising and the lure of a congenial environment, 25,000 persons are induced to congregate daily to take advantage of the numerous amenities offered by the [shopping center there]. A handful of additional orderly persons soliciting signatures and distributing handbills in connection therewith, under reasonable regulations adopted by defendant to assure that these activities do not interfere with normal business operations (see Diamond [v. Bland, 3 Cal.3d 653, 665, 91 Cal.Rptr. 501, 509, 477 P.2d 733, 741 (1970)]) would not markedly dilute defendant's property rights.' [Diamond v. Bland, 11 Cal.3d 331, 345, 113 Cal.Rptr. 468, 478, 521 P.2d 460, 470 (1974)] (dis. opn. of Mosk, J.).)" Id., at 910-911, 153 Cal.Rptr., at 860-861, 592 P.2d, at 347-348.
The California Supreme Court thus expressly overruled its earlier decision in Diamond v. Bland, 11 Cal.3d 331, 113 Cal.Rptr. 468, 521 P.2d 460 (Diamond II ), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 885, 95 S.Ct. 152, 42 L.Ed.2d 125 (1974), which had reached an opposite conclusion. 23 Cal.3d, at 910, 153 Cal.Rptr., at 860, 592 P.2d, at 347.1 Before this Court, appellants contend that their constitutionally established rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to exclude appellees from adverse use of appellants' private property cannot be denied by invocation of a state constitutional provision or by judicial reconstruction of a State's laws of private property. We postponed consideration of the question of jurisdiction until the hearing of the case on the merits. 444 U.S. 949, 100 S.Ct. 419, 62 L.Ed.2d 318. We now affirm.
We initially conclude that this case is properly before us as an appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1257(2). It has long been established that a state constitutional provision is a "statute" within the meaning of § 1257(2). See, e. g., Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488, 489, 81 S.Ct. 1680, 1681, 6 L.Ed.2d 982 (1961); Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46, 48, n. 2, 67 S.Ct. 1672, 1673, n. 2, 91 L.Ed. 1903 (1947); Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. Virginia, 282 U.S. 440, 51 S.Ct. 201, 75 L.Ed. 450 (1931). Here the California Supreme Court decided that Art. 1, §§ 2 and 3, of the California Constitution gave appellees the right to solicit signatures on appellants' property in exercising their state rights of free expression and petition.2 In so doing, the California Supreme Court rejected appellants' claim that recognition of such a right violated appellants' "right to exclude others," which is a fundamental component of their federally protected property rights. Appeal is thus the proper method of review.
Appellants first contend that Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551, 92 S.Ct. 2219, 33 L.Ed.2d 131 (1972), prevents the State from requiring a private shopping center owner to provide access to persons exercising their state constitutional rights of free speech and petition when adequate alternative avenues of communication are available. Lloyd dealt with the question whether under the Federal Constitution a privately owned shopping center may prohibit the distribution of handbills on its property when the handbilling is unrelated to the shopping center's operations. Id., at 552, 92 S.Ct., at 2221. The shopping center had adopted a strict policy against the distribution of handbills within the building complex and its malls, and it made no exceptions to this rule. Id., at 555, 92 S.Ct., at 2222.3 Respondents in Lloyd argued that because the shopping center was open to the public, the First Amendment prevents the private owner from enforcing the handbilling restriction on shopping center premises. Id., at 564, 92 S.Ct., at 2226.4 In rejecting this claim we substantially repudiated the rationale of Food Employees v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U.S. 308, 88 S.Ct. 1601, 20 L.Ed.2d 603 (1968), which was later overruled in Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U.S. 507, 96 S.Ct. 1029, 47 L.Ed.2d 196 (1976). We stated that property does not "lose its private character merely because the public is generally invited to use it for designated purposes," and that "[t]he essentially private character of a store and its privately owned abutting property does not change by virtue of being large or clustered with other stores in a modern shopping center." 407 U.S., at 569, 92 S.Ct., at 2229.
Our reasoning in Lloyd, however, does not ex proprio vigore limit the authority of the State to exercise its police power or its sovereign right to adopt in its own Constitution individual liberties more expansive than those conferred by the Federal Constitution. Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. 58, 62, 87 S.Ct. 788, 791, 17 L.Ed.2d 730 (1967). See also 407 U.S., at 569-570, 92 S.Ct., at 2229. In Lloyd, supra, there was no state constitutional or statutory provision that had been construed to create rights to the use of private property by strangers, comparable to those found to exist by the California Supreme Court here. It is, of course, well established that a State in the exercise of its police power may adopt reasonable restrictions on private property so long as the restrictions do not amount to a taking without just compensation or contravene any other federal constitutional provision. See, e. g., Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365, 47 S.Ct. 114, 71 L.Ed. 303 (1926); Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., 427 U.S. 50, 96 S.Ct. 2440, 49 L.Ed.2d 310 (1976). Lloyd held that when a shopping center owner opens his private property to the public for the purpose of shopping, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution does not thereby create individual rights in expression beyond those already existing under applicable law. See also Hudgens v. NLRB, supra, at 517-521, 96 S.Ct., at 1035-1037.
Appellants next contend that a right to exclude others underlies the Fifth Amendment guarantee against the taking of property without just compensation and the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee against the deprivation of property without due process of law.5
It is true that one of the essential sticks in the bundle of property rights is the right to exclude others. Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U.S. 164, 179-180, 100 S.Ct. 383, 392-393, 62 L.Ed.2d 332 (1979). And here there has literally been a "taking" of that right to the extent that the California Supreme Court has interpreted the State Constitution to entitle its citizens to exercise free expression and petition rights on shopping center property.6 But it is well established that "not every destruction or injury to property by governmental action has been held to be a 'taking' in the constitutional sense." Armstrong v. United States, 364 U.S. 40, 48, 80 S.Ct. 1563, 1568, 4 L.Ed.2d 1554 (1960). Rather, the determination whether a state law unlawfully infringes a landowner's property in violation of the Taking Clause requires an examination of whether the restriction on private property "forc[es] some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole." Id., at 49, 80 S.Ct., at 1569.7 This examination entails inquiry into such factors as the character of the governmental action, its economic impact, and its interference with reasonable investment-backed expectations. Kaiser Aetna v. United States, supra, at 175, 100 S.Ct., at 390. When "regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking." Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393, 415, 43 S.Ct. 158, 160, 67 L.Ed. 322 (1922).
Here the requirement that appellants permit appellees to exercise state-protected rights of free expression and petition on shopping center property clearly does not amount to an unconstitutional infringement of appellants' property rights under the Taking Clause. There is nothing to suggest that preventing appellants from prohibiting this sort of activity will unreasonably impair the value or use of their property as a shopping center. The PruneYard is a large commercial complex that covers several city blocks, contains numerous separate business establishments, and is open to the public at large. The decision of the California Supreme Court makes it clear that the PruneYard may restrict expressive activity by adopting time, place, and manner regulations that will minimize any interference with its commercial functions. Appellees were orderly, and they limited their activity to the common areas of the shopping center. In these circumstances, the fact that they may have "physically invaded" appellants' property cannot be viewed as determinative.
This case is quite different from Kaiser Aetna v. United States, supra. Kaiser Aetna was a case in which the owners of a private pond had invested substantial amounts of money in dredging the pond, developing it into an exclusive marina, and