Opinion ID: 1281454
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: constitutional access rights

Text: While the majority acknowledge the statutory guaranty of access to labor camps, they completely ignore the constitutional underpinnings of labor camp access rights. The majority note that camp access is subject to reasonable time, place and manner regulation, but they do not recognize that constitutional principles necessarily define the outer limits of those restrictions. Even before the Legislature codified protections for agricultural labor organizing activities, this court made it clear that union representatives and workers have reciprocal labor camp access and speech rights under both the federal and state Constitutions. ( United Farm Workers of America v. Superior Court (1975) 14 Cal.3d 902, 910 [122 Cal. Rptr. 877, 537 P.2d 1237].) In that pre-ALRA decision, Justice Mosk wrote for the majority that a labor housing facility is not, of course, the equivalent of a prison isolation block, impervious to visitation.... [¶] ... Labor organizing activities, including picketing, are equally protected by the free speech provisions of our state Constitution. [Citations.] ( Id. at pp. 910, 912.) The primary authority upon which we relied in support of our conclusion that access to labor camps is a First Amendment right was Petersen v. Talisman Sugar Corporation (5th Cir.1973) 478 F.2d 73. (See also Ill. Migrant Council v. Campbell Soup Co. (7th Cir.1978) 574 F.2d 374; Velez v. Amenta (D.Conn. 1974) 370 F. Supp. 1250; United Farm Workers Union, AFL-CIO v. Mel Finerman Co. (D.Colo. 1973) 364 F. Supp. 326; Franceschina v. Morgan (S.D.Ind. 1972) 346 F. Supp. 833; Folgueras v. Hassle (W.D.Mich. 1971) 331 F. Supp. 615.) Like the instant case, Petersen did not involve state action in the traditional sense. Instead, it relied upon the company town theory articulated in Marsh v. Alabama (1946) 326 U.S. 501 [90 L.Ed. 265, 66 S.Ct. 276]. Under this view, although the First Amendment is limited by a state action requirement, where private interests were substituting for and performing the customary functions of government, First Amendment freedoms could not be denied where exercised in the customary manner on the town's sidewalks and streets. ( Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner (1971) 407 U.S. 551, 562 [33 L.Ed.2d 131, 139, 92 S.Ct. 2219].) Our adoption of this analysis demonstrates that we considered labor camps analogous to company towns for the purpose of scrutinizing an employer-landowner's restrictions upon its employee-tenants rights of free speech, association and privacy. [3] Under the company town theory, private property is subject to the same First Amendment standards to which public property is subject. ( Marsh v. Alabama, supra, 326 U.S. 501.) Under established constitutional principles, the government may incidentally regulate speech activity by imposing reasonable nondiscriminatory time, place and manner restrictions which are narrowly drawn to protect significant state interests. ( Grayned v. Rockford (1971) 408 U.S. 104, 115-118 [33 L.Ed.2d 222, 231-234, 92 S.Ct. 2294]; Cox v. Louisiana (1965) 379 U.S. 559, 562-564 [13 L.Ed.2d 487, 490-492, 85 S.Ct. 476].) The interests which the government may legitimately seek to protect depend, in part, upon the purposes for which the property is generally used. ( Heffron v. Int'l Soc. for Krishna Consc. (1980) 452 U.S. 640, 650-651 [69 L.Ed.2d 298, 308-309, 101 S.Ct. 2559]; Grayned, supra, 408 U.S. at p. 116 [33 L.Ed.2d at p. 232]; Tinker v. Des Moines School District (1969) 393 U.S. 503, 513 [21 L.Ed.2d 731, 741-742, 89 S.Ct. 733].) Accordingly, the reasonableness of any given restriction will depend in part, on whether the restricted speech activity is compatible with the normal uses of the property. Moreover, the government may not deny access to property which it has opened to the public unless it establishes that effective alternative means of communication are available. ( Heffron, supra, 452 U.S. at p. 654 [69 L.Ed.2d at p. 311].) Application of these standards to the regulations on access imposed by Andrews demonstrates their clear unconstitutionality. The primary purpose of a labor camp is to provide room and board for migrant agricultural workers. Thus, the grower may only restrict speech activity which would interfere with the running of a communal residence, and only then if the restrictions are narrowly drawn. The regulations imposed by the grower in this case were by no stretch of the imagination narrowly tailored to protect legitimate property interests. [4] Each of the purported justifications posited by Andrews is without substance. Andrews first asserts that its refusal to permit visitors inside the camp was justified to protect camp residents' right to privacy. First, the residents of the camp, not the owner, possess the right to privacy and the standing to assert it. The Court of Appeal in this case properly held that [t]he employer's efforts to protect other worker's privacy rights may not be used as justification for denying access. (See also Carian v. Agricultural Labor Relations Bd., supra, 36 Cal.3d 654, 672-673; Vista Verde Farms v. Agricultural Labor Relations Bd., supra, 29 Cal.3d 307, 317; Sam Andrews' Sons v. Agricultural Labor Relations Bd. (1984) 162 Cal. App.3d 923, 927 [208 Cal. Rptr. 812]; Merzoian, supra, 3 ALRB No. 62, at p. 4.) There is no indication in the record that visitors  union or otherwise  had invaded the privacy of camp residents, or that residents had invoked their privacy rights. Moreover, even if there had been conflict between residents who wished to communicate with the union and those who did not, the restrictions at issue were not narrowly tailored to accommodate the countervailing interests. The rights of those who do not wish to communicate with the union do not automatically conflict with, nor outweigh the rights of those who wish to receive visitors. The goal is to reasonably accommodate the various interests, not to obliterate the interests of some residents in the name of protecting the interests of others. The Board has instructed that a heavy burden will lie with the owner or operator of a camp to show that any rule restricting access does not also restrict the rights of the tenant to be visited or have visitors. ( Merzoian, supra, 3 ALRB No. 62, at p. 4.) Andrews's paternalistic motives, even if they were genuine, could not justify a complete ban on visitation in the labor camp. Andrews's remaining justification for the access denials was that it sought, during a strike, to protect camp residents from union violence and to minimize discord between striking and nonstriking employees residing at the camp. The flaw in this reasoning is that the only residents of the Lakeview Camp during November 1981 were lettuce harvesters, and there was no strike during the lettuce harvest. The July 1981 strike against Andrews involved only tractor drivers, irrigators and melon harvesters. Although nonstriking tractor drivers had once been housed at the camp, they had been gone for three months before the November access denials. Some picketing continued through November, but only in the fields and at the office, not at the camp. Furthermore, the record indicates that no violence occurred in the Lakeview Camp during the month of November 1981 and no property inside the camp was ever damaged. The disturbances to which the majority refer occurred in August 1981 over a period of few days and promptly subsided when a restraining order was issued granting work site access to union representatives. Theoretically, carefully tailored restrictions on access could be justified to protect property and residents from the violent activity of outsiders. However, neither the property nor the residents were threatened in this case, and restrictions on that basis were therefore unjustified. Finally, Andrews has not met its burden of establishing that effective alternative channels of communication were available. The company-owned park adjacent to the camp provides no shelter of any kind, so that visitors would be forced to meet with residents outdoors with no protection from cold, wind, rain or darkness. Moreover, the identification procedure imposed by Andrews added an additional chilling effect. The right of a resident to communicate with union representatives was dependent upon: (1) the representative knowing the resident's name; (2) the willingness of the security guard (an Andrews agent) to notify the worker of the representative's desire to speak with the resident; and (3) the willingness of both the representative and the resident to take the risk of subjecting the resident to the type of antiunion retaliation for which Andrews was notorious. (See Sam Andrews' Sons (Dec. 3, 1979) 5 ALRB No. 68; Sam Andrews' Sons (Sept. 3, 1980) 6 ALRB No. 44; Sam Andrews' Sons (Oct. 5, 1982) 8 ALRB No. 69.) The supposed alternative channels of communication provided by Andrews were better designed to discourage communication with the union than to facilitate it. The majority concede in a footnote that the grower's visitation policies in the instant case were rather clearly not reasonable, but they do not explain the basis of this holding. Indeed, the only access restriction that they analyze in any detail is a fictional one which they create as a backdrop for discussion of issues not presented by this case. In the section entitled Restrictions on Access `in the Home,' the majority first clarify that the workers' home to which access rights attach is the entire camp, not the communal bunkhouse. However, neither the grower nor the parties attempts to raise such a distinction. Visitors were not denied access to the bunkhouse specifically, but to the entire camp. The majority then caution against infringing on the rights, both statutory and constitutional, of employees residing in the communal bedroom not to suffer visits by unrestricted numbers of union representatives at any and all hours of the day and night. Of course, there is no indication in this case that union representatives sought any such unreasonable access  either in terms of numbers or time. Finally, the majority suggest that permitting residents to invite visitors into the bunkhouse would inevitably impinge on the rights of other residents. In order to resolve this fictional dispute, the majority suggest that a policy excluding visitors from the bunkhouse would be appropriate. Hence, the majority create an issue from whole cloth and then resolve it to their liking. Although the entire section can only be regarded as dictum without any precedential value, I strongly object to the majority's gratuitous resolution of issues not before it.