Opinion ID: 1244797
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Schmid Case

Text: Also included in the second category is the New Jersey case of State v. Schmid, supra , another case in which free speech provisions of a state constitution was determined to have no state action requirement. Again, it is significant to note that Article I, par. 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   . (Emphasis added.) Indeed, this provision is even more nearly identical to the provisions of our Article I, section 8, except for the reversal in order of its two sentences. The New Jersey court in State v. Schmid, supra, 423 A.2d at 626, quoted the provisions of its state constitution, as previously stated. In reaching its conclusion that this provision was not limited to state action, that court reasoned that [o]n numerous occasions our own courts have recognized the New Jersey Constitution to be an alternative and independent source of individual rights. Id. at 625. The court then referred to one of its previous decisions, holding that `we have the right to construe our State constitutional provision in accordance with what we conceive to be its plain meaning.' Id. Referring to the provision of its constitution, the court stated that: The constitutional pronouncements, more sweeping in scope than the language of the First Amendment, were incorporated into the organic law of this State with the adoption of the 1844 Constitution.    This early constitutional model itself has been recognized as constituting an independent source of protectable individual rights. Id. at 626-27 (footnote omitted). The New Jersey court continued by stating: [T]he rights of speech and assembly guaranteed by the State Constitution are protectable not only against governmental or public bodies, but under some circumstances against private persons as well.         We conclude, therefore, that the State Constitution furnishes to individuals the complementary freedoms of speech and assembly and protects the reasonable exercise of those rights. These guarantees extend directly to governmental entities as well as to persons exercising governmental powers. They are also available against unreasonably restrictive or oppressive conduct on the part of private entities that have otherwise assumed a constitutional obligation not to abridge the individual exercise of such freedoms because of the public use of their property. Id. at 628 (emphasis added). The court then went on to consider the question of what private property is subject to such restraints and what are reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions upon the exercise of the right of free speech on private property. The free speech provisions of the California and New Jersey Constitutions provided that, in addition to limitations on laws restricting free speech, every person is responsible for abuse of the right of free speech. Clearly, in the absence of this added provision, both the California court in PruneYard and the New Jersey court in Schmid would have held, as held under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and also under similar provisions in the constitutions of other states, that the constitutional provisions for free speech in both of those states was limited to protection against laws and required state action.