Title: Green Party of New Jersey v. Hartz Mountain Industries, Inc.
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: a-59-99
State: new-jersey
Issuer: new-jersey Supreme Court
Date: June 13, 2000

(This syllabus is not part of the opinion of the Court. It has been prepared by the Office of the Clerk for the convenience of the reader. It has been neither reviewed nor approved by the Supreme Court. Please note that, in the interests of brevity, portions of any opinion may not have been summarized). O'HERN, J., writing for a unanimous Court. In New Jersey Coalition Against War in the Middle East v. J.M.B. Realty Corp., 138 N.J. 326 (1994), the Supreme Court ruled that owners of shopping malls must permit leafletting and related political and societal speech subject to reasonable time, place and manner restrictions. At issue in this appeal is the proper legal standard for determining the reasonableness of such restrictions. In 1996 and 1997, plaintiffs applied for permission to set up an information table, hand out leaflets, and obtain signatures on behalf of a political party and its candidate at a local shopping mall. The mall's regulations: 1) limited an applicant's activities to one day per year between January 1 and October 31 unless otherwise approved by the mall management upon written request; 2) required applicants to provide a certificate of insurance in the amount of $1,000,000; and 3) required applicants to sign a hold-harmless agreement indemnifying the mall for any claims or losses, including costs and counsel fees incurred defending the claims. Plaintiffs obtained a quote for the insurance certificate and found it prohibitive. Plaintiffs' application to the Chancery Division for interim relief was granted, which enabled them to leaflet the mall without obtaining the insurance certificate. Based on the Coalition Court's ruling that shopping malls are de facto traditional public forums, the Chancery Division judge held that regulations affecting freedom of speech should be narrowly tailored to promote a substantial business interest of the mall. Applying that standard, the court found that all three of the mall's regulations were invalid. The Appellate Division reversed, 324 N.J. Super. 192 (1999), finding that Coalition supported a reasonable business judgment standard under which the malls would have broad powers to regulate the right to leaflet. Under this standard, the three regulations at issue were upheld as reasonable means of protecting the mall's property interests and precluding certain groups from dominating access to the mall. The Supreme Court granted plaintiffs' petition for certification. HELD: Neither the narrowly tailored test utilized by the Chancery court nor the reasonable business judgment test applied by the Appellate Division are proper standards for determining the reasonableness of time, place and manner restrictions on free speech in shopping malls. Instead, courts must balance the rights of citizens to speak and assemble with the private property rights of mall owners by considering the factors of the nature and importance of the affected right, the extent to which the restriction impedes that right, and the mall's need for the restriction. 1. In Coalition, the Court reiterated the test found in State v. Schmid, 84 N.J. 535, 563 (1980), for determining whether private property owners may restrict the constitutional rights of speech and assembly. That test considered (1) the nature, purposes, and primary use of [the] property, . . .; 2) the extent and nature of the public's invitation to use that property; and 3) the purpose of the expressional activity undertaken upon such property in relation to both the private and public use of the property, along with a general balancing of expressional rights versus private property rights. Applying the Schmid test to regional shopping malls, the Coalition Court held that shopping malls are the functional counterpart of downtown business districts and, as such, cannot prohibit leafletting and similar political or societal free speech. However, the Coalition Court held that mall owners have broad power to impose reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on such activities and explained that the limited free speech right at shopping malls did not include bullhorns, megaphones, placards, pickets, parades, demonstrations and similarly intrusive actions. (pp. 14-26) 3. In considering the weight of the plaintiffs' political speech rights, the Court notes the very high value of leafletting in political discourse. In weighing the countervailing harm mall owners may suffer, the Court considers the nature and extent of risk posed by leafleteers and pamphleteers using objective factors including any prior history of injury with this or related groups and any demonstration by the parties of actual cost or risk. Since the mall is already faced with the risk of claims from its invitation to thousands of people per year to shop, the Court finds that the primary question to be answered is what additional risk to the mall owners is created by the occasional presence of signature gatherers? (p. 32-40) 4. On the record before the Court, the mall's $1,000,000 insurance certificate requirement lacks objective proof of reasonableness and is therefore invalid. The Court further finds that the mall's requirement of a hold-harmless agreement is linked to the insurance certificate requirement and is similarly unsupported by objective data. Since the parties were attempting to agree on the number of days leafletting would be permitted, the Court does not rule on that requirement, but states that more than one day per year will be reasonably required to protect the expressive right involved. (pp. 40-45) The judgment of the Appellate Division is REVERSED and the judgment of the Chancery Division is REINSTATED as MODIFIED. CHIEF JUSTICE PORTIZ and JUSTICES STEIN, COLEMAN, LONG, VERNIERO, and LaVECCHIA join in JUSTICE O'HERN's opinion. GREEN PARTY OF NEW JERSEY and JAMES MOHN, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. HARTZ MOUNTAIN INDUSTRIES, INC., d/b/a THE MALL AT MILL CREEK, Defendant-Respondent. Argued March 28, 2000-- Decided June 13, 2000 On certification to the Superior Court, Appellate Division, whose opinion is reported at 324 N.J. Super. 192 (1999). Frank Askin on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey argued the cause for appellants. Curtis L. Michael argued the cause for respondent (Horowitz Rubino &amp; Patton, attorneys). Bennet D. Zurofsky argued the cause for amici curiae New Jersey Peace Action, New Jersey Industrial Union Council, AFL-CIO and New Jersey Labor Party (Reitman Parsonnet, attorneys). James M. Hirschhorn argued the cause for amicus curiae International Council of Shopping Centers (Sills Cummins Radin Tischman Epstein &amp; Gross, attorneys; Mr. Hirschhorn and Jeffrey H. Newman, of counsel and on the brief). The opinion of the Court was delivered by A. James Mohn, a resident of Guttenberg, had been actively involved with the New Jersey Draft Nader for President Committee ( Nader Committee ) in 1996 and thereafter with the Green Party of New Jersey. He also participated in membership and voter registration drives and leafletting for other organizations, including the New Jersey Peace Action, Witness for Peace, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, and the Rainbow Coalition. The Mall at Mill Creek ( Mall ) is owned by Hartz Mountain Industries and is located in Hudson County. Because nearby Bergen County enforces blue laws, Mohn considered soliciting petition signatures at the Mall important as numerous Bergen County residents would visit the Mall on Sundays. In addition, he believed that the Mall was a gathering place for large numbers of people on other days of the week, an enclosed area that was preferable during bad weather, and near his home. Approximately three times a week, Mohn and his wife went to the Mall as Merry Milers to walk for exercise in the mornings. The Mall contains about 325,000 square feet of gross leasable area, but only approximately 35,000 square feet of common area open to the public. In Coalition, the Law Division described the Mall as a community shopping centerSee footnote 11 situated on twenty-seven acres of land in Secaucus, located near the New Jersey Turnpike Exit 16E and Route 3. The Mall has three public entrances and a single-floor layout, which is roughly a straight line passageway between two anchor stores. Both ends and sides of the Mall are lined by stores, with enlarged common areas at each end and midpoint. Kiosks, carts, and tables fill a narrow band of common area at the center of the passageway and in the three enlarged areas. In September 1996, Mohn requested space to set up an information table at the Mall on behalf of the Nader Committee.See footnote 22 In response, the Mall sent Mohn a copy of its license agreement and regulations, which provided in part: The following comprise the regulations of the Mall at Mill Creek for informational activities of non-profit organizations, individuals, or entities (collectively Permittee ). The Mall at Mill Creek has afforded reasonable access for community and non-profit groups desiring to use the Mall for informational activities. However, informational activities must be conducted in a manner so as not to disturb Mill Creek's customers or tenants. Mill Creek reserves the right to change these rules at any time. 1. Activities are generally limited to one day per year between January 1 and October 31, unless otherwise approved by Mall Management upon written request.See footnote 33 B. In March 1997, Mohn was in the process of organizing the Green Party of New Jersey. On January 25, 1997, the Party was established at a meeting of about forty people, most of whom had been members of the Nader Committee, at the Rutgers Labor Education Center in New Brunswick.See footnote 44 After the formation of the Green Party, plaintiffs amended their complaint to replace the Nader Committee with the Green Party as plaintiff. The Green Party then sought to obtain 2,000 ballot signatures on its nominating petition for its gubernatorial candidate in 1997. While seeking signatures for the petition in other locations, Mohn had handed out a flier that described the Green Party, its candidate, and positions. If granted access, Mohn intended to use that document in his leafletting and collection of petition signatures at the Mall. Richard Lofberg, a licensed property and casualty underwriter, a witness for the Mall, explained that shopping centers require insurance of their tenants and vendors for these reasons: A mall is open to the public, it is a private location, a private site, because it is a private site the owner of that property is literally fully exposed to anything that happens, the slip and falls in shopping malls are horrendous, the rights of protection are really somewhat limited, considering what can happen there . . . . Lofberg stated that insurance was available for such risks, and that when a group is financially strong enough to carry part of that risk itself, it can use a self-insured retention, also called a high deductible, to lower its insurance costs on a per claim or a per period basis. Lofberg also observed that the Nader Committee's insurance quotation did not contain a policy provision limiting the leafletting activities to one day, so that the $500 premium cost (plus $165 in taxes and fees) appeared to contemplate coverage for a full year at the Mall. He said that coverage for only one day would be rated differently.See footnote 55 According to the Mall's Director of Insurance and Risk Management, the Mall's regular tenants were required to have insurance coverage at policy limits of $5,000,000 per occurrence, and the leases usually had a hold harmless provision. She noted that Hartz had a $1,250,000 per occurrence deductible and supplied a three-page listing of claims that the Mall had experienced for incidents that occurred between September 1993 and June 1996, which with expenses totaled $497,507.38. Plaintiffs dispute that claims made equate with claims paid. Most of the claims were for less than $35,000 each. There were two large claims in 1993 that totaled $220,000 and $101,030, respectively. C. The Chancery Division reviewed free speech guarantees of the United States and New Jersey Constitutions and the Coalition decision. The court also reviewed four California cases that concerned similar shopping mall restrictions.See footnote 66 The court interpreted those cases as applying the same standard that the United States Supreme Court applies to governmental restrictions on freedom of speech in a traditional public forum, namely that the government may impose reasonable content-neutral time, place and manner restrictions, but those restrictions must be narrowly drawn to promote its substantial interests. The Chancery Division adopted that standard for reviewing regulations imposed by private shopping malls in New Jersey, interpreting the rationale of Coalition as a holding that in New Jersey a shopping mall is a de facto traditional public forum. The court considered the insurance requirement cost-prohibitive given the Party's limited funds. The court speculated that splinter political groups are often unable to secure insurance at any price and that the requirement was unnecessary because the Mall would not be vicariously liable for the conduct of the Green Party. The insurance requirement might also raise other constitutional issues, particularly if underwriters consider such matters as the political beliefs of applicants, the likelihood of adverse publicity to the insurer, the lack of business experience of the group, and other factors that are irrelevant or improper. Eastern Conn. Citizens Action Group v. Powers, 723 F.2d 1050, 1056 n.2 (2d Cir. 1983). The court concluded that because the insurance and hold harmless requirements were intertwined, they were unconstitutional as a de facto ban on free[dom of] speech because compliance, if achievable, is cost prohibitive. See footnote 77 B. At one time private property owners exercised virtually unfettered control over property. As social standards changed, the law changed to recognize the primacy of certain public interests over the rights of private property owners. In Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501, 66 S. Ct. 276, 90 L. Ed. 265 (1946), the Court recognized that public interests could control not only what a landowner could do with its property (as through zoning laws) but also the owner's freedom to exclude or limit the conduct of the public on that property. Police had arrested Grace Marsh and others who had been distributing religious pamphlets outside the post office of a privately owned company town. Id. at 503-04. Had Marsh been in any other town, the sidewalk near the post office would have been public property, and she would have had a First Amendment right to express herself freely on that public property. Focusing on the fundamental liberties of disseminating and receiving ideas, the Supreme Court held that the pamphleteers' constitutional rights had been abridged. It concluded that, except for ownership by a private corporation, the company town has all the characteristics of any other American town. Id. at 501. Although acknowledging the significance of the property rights involved, the Court found it necessary to balance against those rights the constitutional right of free expression. The Court discussed the historical importance of town centers as a forum for the free exchange of ideas and information. No other location gives speakers the opportunity to convey their messages to their fellow citizens. People traveled from residential areas to the town center, rendering it the only forum in which a resident could communicate with other fellow citizens. The Marsh Court concluded that when we balance the Constitutional rights of owners of property against those of the people to enjoy freedom of press and religion . . . we remain mindful of the fact that the latter occupy a preferred position. Id. at 509. C. As in California, free speech is protected in New Jersey by the State Constitution, as well as the Federal Constitution. Article 1, paragraph 6, of the New Jersey Constitution provides: Every person may freely speak, write and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right. No law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press. In all prosecutions or indictments for libel, the truth may be given in evidence to the jury; and if it shall appear to the jury that the matter charged as libelous is true, and was published with good motives and for justifiable ends, the party shall be acquitted; and the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the fact. A. B. We disagree, however, that the business judgment rule is the proper standard. Use of that standard evokes a familiar memory. In 1952, Charles Wilson, a former chief executive officer of General Motors who served as a member of President Eisenhower's Cabinet, remarked of business judgment that [w]hat is good for the country is good for General Motors, and what's good for General Motors is good for the country. U.S. v. Dethlefs, 123 F.3d 39, 45 n.5 (1st Cir. 1997). We are not so certain that what is good for mall owners is good for the country, or, in this case, good for the citizens of New Jersey who seek to exercise their free speech rights. The amicus brief of the International Council of Shopping Centers has recognized as much and not urged that we adopt the business judgment rule as the standard to measure restraints on free speech by a mall operator. C. Rather, we believe that the test to be applied is to be derived from the principles of Coalition that relied not only on the three-prong test in Schmid, but also on a general balancing of expressional rights and private property interests. The Court recognized that [a]s private property becomes, on a sliding scale, committed either more or less to public use and enjoyment, there is actuated, in effect, a counterbalancing between expressional and property rights. [T]he more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it. [Id. at 363 (citations omitted).] New Jersey has generally avoided classifying cases into different tiers for purposes of constitutional analysis. Justice Clifford once remarked that such elaborate analytical structures have a tendency to create a veil of tiers which shrouds [the] essential issue. Matthews v. Atlantic City, 84 N.J. 153, 175 (1980) (Clifford, J., dissenting). Rather than to slot cases into tiers of strict scrutiny or narrow tailoring, we have attempted in constitutional analysis to balance the competing interests, giving proper weight to the constitutional values. Thus, in balancing the interests of abortion protesters to picket with the private property rights of physicians to residential privacy, we sought to protect the constitutional rights of each. Murray, supra, 138 N.J. at 232. Here, we must also balance the rights of citizens to speak and assemble freely with the private property rights of mall owners. In striking this balance, we must consider the nature of the affected right, the extent to which the mall's restriction intrudes upon it, and the mall's need for the restriction. Greenberg v. Kimmelman, 99 N.J. 552 (1985) (applying similar balancing test in context of equal protection and due process claims involving employment rights). The more important the constitutional right sought to be exercised, the greater the mall's need must be to justify interference with the exercise of that right. Shack, supra, 58 N.J. at 307 (discussing needs of migrant workers to be informed of their rights as outweighing private property interests of employer). IV. In considering the weight of the Green Party's expressional rights, attention must be paid to the nature of the rights involved. Historically, centers of commerce have been meeting places for those who wish to speak, write, or exchange ideas. In the Athenian Agora and the Roman Forum, on the London streets and colonial village greens, the public ways and gathering places, men [and today we would add women] learned the strength and wisdom of free discussion. Police Commissioner of Baltimore City v. Siegel Enterprises, Inc., 223 Md. 110, 128 (1960). There is a strong correlation between a free market in goods and a free market in ideas. [Our] description of the theory of freedom of speech is based on an analogy to the economic market. Indeed, the dominant metaphor for freedom of the press throughout most of this century has been the marketplace of ideas. The metaphor is based on the assumption that the truth will always win in a free and open encounter with falsehood. It is also based on a classic model of freedom of speech built upon the image of soapbox orators or individual pamphleteers who tried to reach their audiences. [Alberto Bernabe Riefkohl, Freedom of the Press and the Business of Journalism: The Myth of Democratic Competition in the Marketplace of Ideas, 67 Rev. Jur. U.P.R. 447 (1998) (footnotes omitted).] We would have hoped that mall owners would sense the connection between the colonial pamphleteers who secured our liberties and the pamphleteers who today seek access to the new forums of commerce. At the same time it is encouraging that the exchange of discordant views perpetuates the classical model of freedom that we pursue. In this case, we are concerned with the right of persons to hand out fliers and solicit signatures in support of a candidate's nomination to public office. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has described the paramount importance of this expressive activity: Ballot access is of fundamental importance in our form of government because through the ballot the people can control their government.... The difference between free speech and . . . rights to free elections and to be a candidate equally with others is not purely theoretical. Ideas and views can be transmitted through the press, by door-to door distributions, or through the mail without personal contact. On the other hand, a person needing signatures for ballot access requires personal contact with voters. He or she cannot reasonably obtain them in any other way. Reasonable access to the public is essential in ballot access matters. [Batchelder v. Allied Stores International, Inc., 388 Mass. 83, 92 (1983) (citations omitted).] Throughout much of New Jersey today there is no place to go, other than shopping centers and regional malls, if one is to have an opportunity to meet face-to-face with large groups of people in order to interest them in an issue by handing them a leaflet or asking them to sign a petition. Except for those commercial centers, the public common has largely ceased to exist. Most businesses in the state are conducted in facilities surrounded by parking lots far from the public streets. Leafletting continues to be, as it has for generations, one of the few effective means of actually meeting a large number of fellow citizens. Because leaflets can be produced easily and inexpensively by almost anyone, they have been a favored means of such personal communication. A leafleteer with only a few dollars and a few hours can reach hundreds of people in a community if that leafleteer stands where most people are located. The Internet, cable television, and newer forms of media are of no help in this process. Leafletting also enables an organization to respond quickly to current events and provides a personal message that the leafleteer stands for the cause. In addition, a leafleteer is likely to be required to engage in leafletting more than once a year, either because of a need to reach more people or because of the simple facts of political life, such that a candidate must not only seek public support to get on the ballot but must also seek votes when the election is held, and that issues change with time and events. Leafletting in heavily visited shopping areas therefore has a very high value in our system of political discourse. Putting too high a price on the exercise of that freedom may destroy it. In a long series of cases, the Supreme Court has held that governmental fees imposed as a condition of speech, are constitutionally suspect. In Forsythe County, Ga. v. Nationalist Movement, 505 U.S. 123, 112 S. Ct. 2395, 128 L. Ed. 2d 101 (1992), the Court ruled that because a county ordinance imposing a fee for a parade permit provided no articulated standards or objective factors to guide the administrators' decision, the requirement was invalid. The late Professor Eric Neisser summarized these standards in his article, Charging for Free Speech: User Fees and Insurance in the Marketplace of Ideas, 74 Geo. L.J. 257 (1985). In H-CHH Assocs. v. Citizens for Representative Gov't, 193 Cal. App. 3d 1193, 238 Cal. Rptr. 841, review denied (Oct. 29, 1987), cert. denied, 485 U.S. 971, 108 S. Ct. 1248, 99 L. Ed. 2d 446 (1988), the California Court of Appeals considered a rule that conferred upon mall management the discretion to determine whether proposed political petitioning created a risk of injury or damage to person or property that required special insurance protection, which the applicant must then provide. The panel stated that '[r]isk of injury' is yet another general and subjective standard vulnerable to arbitrary or content related determination. It is closely akin in value as a standard to 'danger to public'; in a word, it is fatally defective. Id. at 857 (citing Hague v.CIO, 307 U.S. 496, 516, 59 S. Ct. 954, 964, 83 L. Ed. 1423 (1939)). The court concluded: Neither is there any indication as to how management is to determine whether the risk warrants special insurance protection. In its totality, [the mall's insurance requirement] is unconstitutionally overbroad. Once again it is possible for plaintiffs to craft the necessary objective criteria, i.e.: (1) Whether there is a prior history of injury to persons or property when this group engages in expressive activity; (2) whether there is a prior history of injury to persons or property when similar groups engage in expressive activity; (3) the historical scope of the risk and whether it exceeds the minimal or inconsequential; (4) whether the risk can be lessened or eliminated by adjusting the time, date, place or planned manner of expression; and (5) if so, whether the applicant is willing to make such adjustments.... NO. A-59 GREEN PARTY OF NEW JERSEY and JAMES MOHN, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. HARTZ MOUNTAIN INDUSTRIES, INC., d/b/a THE MALL AT MILL CREEK, Defendant-Respondent. DECIDED June 13, 2000 Chief Justice Poritz