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

Heading: Amalgamated Food Employees Union, Local 590 v. Logan Valley Plaza

Text: Marsh was only briefly extended by Amalgamated Food Employees Union, Local 590 v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U.S. 308, 88 S.Ct. 1601, 20 L.Ed.2d 603 (1968), when the United States Supreme Court held that the peaceful picketing aimed at a store within a shopping mall, and carried out in the privately owned parking lot adjacent to the mall, was protected by the first amendment based on equating the shopping mall to the business block in Marsh. Nonetheless, Justice White's dissent in Logan Valley signaled an imminent narrowing of Marsh's purview: [T]he company town [in Marsh ] was found to have all of the attributes of a state-created municipality and the company was found effectively to be exercising official power as a delegate of the State. In the context of that case, the streets of the company town were as available and as dedicated to public purposes as the streets of an ordinary town. The company owner stood in the shoes of the State in attempting to prevent the streets from being used as public streets are normally used. The situation here is starkly different.... Logan Valley Plaza is not a town but only a collection of stores. In no sense are any parts of the shopping center dedicated to the public for general purposes or the occupants of the Plaza exercising official powers. The public is invited to the premises but only in order to do business with those who maintain establishments there. The invitation is to shop for the products which are sold. .... I am fearful that the Court's decision today will be a license for pickets to leave the public streets and carry out their activities on private property, as long as they are not obstructive. I do not agree that when the owner of private property invites the public to do business with him he impliedly dedicates his property for other uses as well. I do not think the [f]irst [a]mendment, which bars only official interferences with speech, has this reach. Logan Valley, 391 U.S. at 337-340, 88 S.Ct. 1601 (White, J., dissenting) (emphases added).