Opinion ID: 766867
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Right to Petition the Government

Text: 30 In its third claim for relief, Waste Management alleges that the Organized Crime Connections' conclusion contained in the report and the report's public dissemination deprivedWaste Management of California, Inc., of its right to petition the Government guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution because it (1) was intended to impair and did impair its ability to obtain a use permit for its proposed landfill, (2) was intended to retaliate and did retaliate against it for exercising its First Amendment right to petition the Government, and (3) was intended to chill and did chill its First Amendment right to petition the Government. 31 The First Amendment provides in relevant part that Congress shall make no law . . . abridging . . . the right of the people . . . to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. U.S. Const. amend. I. Waste Management of California, Inc.'s, application for a major use permit is not equivalent to a petition to the Government for redress of grievances under the First Amendment. The protections afforded by the Petition Clause have been limited by the Supreme Court to situations where an individual's associational or speech interests are also implicated. See McDonald v. Smith, 472 U.S. 479, 482-85 (1985) (describing the right to petition as cut from the same cloth as the other expressive rights embodied in the First Amendment and holding that a petition clause claim must implicate some firstamendment right); United Mine Workers of America v. Illinois State Bar Ass'n, 389 U.S. 217, 222-23 (1967) (extending First Amendment Petition Clause protection to unions who provided collective legal services because services were undertaken to secure meaningful access to the courts, which implicated the First Amendment associational interests); NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 430-31 (1963) (holding that NAACP's financing of litigation was a form of political expression and thus protected under the Petition Clause). An application for a major use permit implicates neither Waste Management's associational nor speech interests. Because Waste Management's application does not amount to a petition to the Government for a redress of grievances under the First Amendment, its third claim must fail.