Opinion ID: 2597507
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Marsh v. Alabama

Text: An exception to the requirement of government action, however, was delineated in Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501, 66 S.Ct. 276, 90 L.Ed. 265 (1946), when the United States Supreme Court found the right to free speech protected in the business block of a company town where that town had all the characteristics of a state-created municipality. In Marsh, a Jehovah's Witness who distributed literature without permission on a sidewalk in Chickasaw, Alabama, was convicted of criminal trespass. Chickasaw was a company town, wholly owned by the Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation, which the Court described as follows: The property consists of residential buildings, streets, a system of sewers, a sewage disposal plant and a `business block' on which business places are situated. A deputy of the Mobile County Sheriff, paid by the company, serves as the town's policeman. Merchants and service establishments have rented the stores and business places on the business block and the United States uses one of the places as a post office from which six carriers deliver mail to the people of Chickasaw and the adjacent area. The town and the surrounding neighborhood, which can not be distinguished from the Gulf property by anyone not familiar with the property lines, are thickly settled, and according to all indications the residents use the business block as their regular shopping center. To do so, they now, as they have for many years, make use of a company-owned paved street and sidewalk located alongside the store fronts in order to enter and leave the stores and the post office. Intersecting company-owned roads at each end of the business block lead into a four-lane public highway which runs parallel to the business block at a distance of thirty feet.... In short the town and its shopping district are accessible to and freely used by the public in general and there is nothing to distinguish them from any other town and shopping center except the fact that the title to the property belongs to a private corporation. Id. at 502-503, 66 S.Ct. 276. The United States Supreme Court refused to accept the argument that, because all property interests in the town were held by a single company, it was enough to give that company power, enforceable by a state statute, to abridge [first amendment] freedoms. Id. at 505, 66 S.Ct. 276. Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens 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 506, 66 S.Ct. 276 (internal citation omitted).