Opinion ID: 3037195
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Use of the Conference Room for Prayers

Text: Mr. Berry claims that the Red Bluff Room is open to other nonbusiness-related meetings and therefore allowing individual employees to use the room for prayer would not be seen as endorsing religion. He contends that the room had been used for such activities as “Junior Mints,” “social organizations,” “rodeo-theme picnics,” baby showers, and birthday celebrations. The district court, however disagreed, noting: There is no evidence in the record here demonstrating that the Red Bluff Room is used for anything other than official business meetings and businessrelated social functions, such as employee birthday parties, of the sort ordinarily allowed by employers in meeting areas. There is no evidence of the County ever having allowed any religious or political group to meet in the space or announcing its intention to allow such a meeting. Indeed, there is no evidence that the room has been made publicly accessible at all. Thus, the conference room falls into that category of public property which is “not intended to be a forum for the public expression of ideas and opinions.” May [v. Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corp.], 787 F.2d [1105,] 1113 [(7th Cir. 1986)]. [6] The Supreme Court in Cornelius v. NAACP Legal some support in the Supreme Court’s recent opinions in McCreary County v. ACLU, 125 S. Ct. 2722 (2005), and Van Orden v. Perry, 125 S. Ct. 2854 (2005). 4894 BERRY v. DEP’T OF SOCIAL SERVICES Defense & Educational Fund, 473 U.S. 788, 802 (1985), held that “[t]he government does not create a public forum by inaction or by permitting limited discourse, but only by intentionally opening a nontraditional forum for public discourse.”10 The Court further held “[t]he Government’s decision to restrict access to a nonpublic forum need only be reasonable; it need not be the most reasonable or the only reasonable limitation.” Id. at 808 (emphasis in original). In Arkansas Educational Television Commission v. Forbes, (Forbes), 523 U.S. 666 (1998), the Court further noted that “the government does not create a designated public forum when it does no more than reserve eligibility for access to the forum to a particular class of speakers, whose members must then, as individuals, ‘obtain permission.’ ” Id. at 679 (internal citation omitted).11 10 In Cornelius, the Supreme Court noted that it had identified three types of fora in Perry Education Assn. v. Perry Local Educators’ Assn., 460 U.S. 37, 44 (1983): [1] the traditional public forum, [2] the public forum created by government designation, and [3] the nonpublic forum. Traditional public fora are those places which “by long tradition or by government fiat have been devoted to assembly and debate.” 460 U.S. at 45, 103 S.Ct. at 954. Public streets and parks fall into this category. See Hague v. CIO, 307 U.S. 496, 515, . . . (1939). In addition to traditional public fora, a public forum may be created by government designation of a place or channel of communication for use by the public at large for assembly and speech, for use by certain speakers, or for the discussion of certain subjects. Perry Education Assn., supra, 460 U.S., at 45 and 46, n. 7. . . . Of course, the government “is not required to indefinitely retain the open character of the facility.” Id., at 46, 103 S.Ct., at 955. 473 U.S. at 802. 11 The Court offered the following explanation for its policy: The Cornelius distinction between general and selective access furthers First Amendment interests. By recognizing the distinction, we encourage the government to open its property to some expressive activity in cases where, if faced with an all-or-nothing choice, it might not open the property at all. That this distinction turns on governmental intent does not render it unprotective of BERRY v. DEP’T OF SOCIAL SERVICES 4895 Accordingly, we must first consider whether accepting Mr. Berry’s allegations as true, there is sufficient evidence from which a trier of fact could determine that the Department has opened the Red Bluff Room to public discourse. Our review of the record reveals that the Department held an annual western-style barbecue for its employees in conjunction with the annual Red Bluff Rodeo and, on that occasion, food was placed in the Red Bluff Room for the employees to eat. “Junior Mints” was a group that helped put on the annual Rodeo Day barbecue for the employees. The only other evidence in the record of use of the Red Bluff Room by a “social organization” concerned an occasion when some employees sought to organize a “Relay for Life” walk to raise money for cancer research.12 Although the group used the room once, the Director then determined that the “Relay for Life” group was a nonbusiness related group and stopped the group from using the room, just as he did with Mr. Berry. [7] Thus, the only permitted use of the Red Bluff Room that was not generally associated with the Department’s administrative duties was for birthday parties and baby showers. This appears to be similar to the reservation of “eligibility for access to the forum to a particular class of speakers” which the Supreme Court in Forbes held did not create a pubspeech. Rather, it reflects the reality that, with the exception of traditional public fora, the government retains the choice of whether to designate its property as a forum for specified classes of speakers. 523 U.S. at 680. 12 Although Berry’s brief mentions the use of the Red Bluff Room for “quilting group meetings” there is no support for this conclusory allegation in the record. See Carmen v. San Francisco Unified Sch. Dist., 237 F.3d 1026, 1031 (9th Cir. 2001) (holding that a “court need not examine the entire file for evidence establishing a genuine issue of fact, where the evidence is not set forth in the opposing papers with adequate references so that it could conveniently be found.”). 4896 BERRY v. DEP’T OF SOCIAL SERVICES lic forum. 523 U.S. at 679. It is certainly not the type of intentional opening of a nontraditional forum for public discourse that the Supreme Court has indicated is necessary to convert a nonpublic forum into a public forum. Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 808. Accordingly, we determine that the Red Bluff Room remains a nonpublic forum. Mr. Berry argues that even for a nonpublic forum the government regulation of speech must be reasonable, and that the restriction may not be based on disagreement with the speaker’s view. He cites Justice O’Connor’s concurring opinion in International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Inc. v. Lee, 505 U.S. 672 (1992), that the question is whether restrictions are “reasonably related to maintaining the multipurpose environment that the [authority] has deliberately created.” Id. at 689. This approach fails for several reasons. First, the Red Bluff Room does not have the multiple purposes presented by the airport at issue in Lee. Second, the reason given by the Department for not allowing Mr. Berry to use the Red Bluff Room was viewpoint neutral. Third, in light of the Department’s prior denial of use of the Red Bluff Room by the “Relay for Life” group, and the lack of any evidence that the Department permitted the use of the Red Bluff Room for any other social organizations, we are compelled to conclude that Mr. Berry was denied the use of the Red Bluff Room because he sought to use it for a nonbusiness-related activity, and not because that activity happened to be religious. [8] We conclude that the Department’s decision to allow the Red Bluff Room to be used for birthday parties and baby showers, but not by employee social organizations is a “reasonable” limitation as defined by the Supreme Court in Cornelius and Forbes.13 The Department could reasonably 13 The Supreme Court’s approach to “reasonableness” in United States v. Kokinda, 497 U.S. 720 (1990), is instructive. At issue was a Postal SerBERRY v. DEP’T OF SOCIAL SERVICES 4897 determine that such business-related social functions furthered its administrative tasks in ways that employee social organizations and prayer meetings would not. Birthday parties and baby showers are arguably less likely to challenge employees’ religious beliefs, are less likely to exclude employees and are unlikely to be held to “honor” any individual employee more than once a year. Certainly the distinction is not compelling, but we think that it is reasonable, and that is all that is required for a nonpublic forum. Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 808. We conclude that the Department’s decision to deny Mr. Berry’s proposed use of the Red Bluff Room, a nonpublic forum, for prayer meetings did not violate his rights under the First Amendment.