Opinion ID: 2634656
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Gerawan I and Glickman

Text: In Gerawan I, supra, 24 Cal.4th 468, 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 12 P.3d 720, the court recognized that a program very similar to the one at issue in this case had been upheld as constitutional under the First Amendment in Glickman, supra, 521 U.S. 457, 117 S.Ct. 2130, in which Gerawan itself had been a plaintiff. Gerawan I's discussion and critique of Glickman is central to the resolution of this case and will be reviewed at length. Gerawan I characterized Glickman as follows: In Glickman, a majority sustained Marketing Order No. 917, issued by the United States Secretary of Agriculture pursuant to the AMAA against a challenge by Gerawan, among others, that it violated their First Amendment right to freedom of speech by compelling funding of generic advertising. At the outset, the Glickman majority `stress[ed] the importance of the . . . context' established by the AMAA. ( Glickman v. Wileman Brothers & Elliott, Inc., supra, 521 U.S. at p. 469, 117 S.Ct. 2130.) They also emphasized that Marketing Order No. 917 was a `detailed' `regulatory scheme' that had `displaced many aspects of independent business activity that characterize other portions of the economy in which competition is fully protected by the antitrust laws.' ( Ibid. ) It `compelled' Gerawan and the rest `to fund the generic advertising at issue . . . as a part of a broader collective enterprise in which their freedom to act independently' was `already constrained.' ( Glickman v. Wileman Brothers & Elliott, Inc., supra, 521 U.S. at p. 469, 117 S.Ct. 2130.) [¶] . . . [¶] The Glickman majority went on to conclude that Marketing Order No. 917 did not even implicate, still less violate, the First Amendment right of Gerawan and the rest to freedom of speech by compelling funding of generic advertising. (See Glickman v. Wileman Brothers & Elliott, Inc., supra, 521 U.S. at pp. 468, 473-474, fn. 16, & 476 [117 S.Ct. 2130].) They considered the marketing order in question as merely a `species of economic regulation,' no more and no less, without any effect on the right at issue. ( Id. at p. 477 [117 S.Ct. 2130].) They `presume[d]' that Gerawan and the rest `agree[d] with the central message of the speech that [was] generated by the generic [advertising].' ( Id. at p. 470 [117 S.Ct. 2130].) They did not measure the marketing order against the right, but rather purported to `distinguish' the former out of the latter's scope. ( Id. at p. 469 [117 S.Ct. 2130].) ( Gerawan I, supra, 24 Cal.4th at pp. 499-500, 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 12 P.3d 720, fn. omitted.) As recounted in Gerawan I, the Glickman court explained that the order neither restricted plaintiffs from speaking nor compelled them to speak. Most importantly, the Glickman majority stated that the order did not `compel' any person to fund any `political or ideological' speech ( Glickman v. Wileman Brothers & Elliott, Inc., supra, 521 U.S. at pp. 469-470, 117 S.Ct. 2130): The generic advertising amounted only to commercial speech, `encouraging consumers to buy' the fruit indicated [citation]; it could not be `said to engender any crisis of conscience' in political or ideological matters [citation] or to `conflict with' anyone's `freedom of belief' in such areas [citation]; any objection against the generic advertising as political or ideological in character, for instance, as `promot[ing] . . . socialistic programs' [citation], was `trivial' [citation]. Indeed, decisions such as Abood and its progeny, including Keller, stand for the proposition that a person who has lawfully been compelled to associate with others may be compelled to fund even political or ideological speech, without suffering a violation of his First Amendment right to freedom of speech, if the political or ideological speech in question is `germane to the purposes' that `justified' the `compelled association' in the first place. [Citation.] ( Gerawan I, supra, 24 Cal.4th at p. 501, 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 12 P.3d 720.) As we recognized in Gerawan I, Glickman also concluded that even if Marketing Order No. 917 did implicate plaintiffs' First Amendment rights, it did not violate them. The `test' of Abood and Keller would `clearly' be `satisfied in this case because . . . the generic advertising . . . is unquestionably germane to the purposes of the marketing order[]. . . .' ( Glickman v. Wileman Brothers & Elliott, Inc., supra, 521 U.S. at p. 473 [117 S.Ct. 2130].) ( Gerawan I, supra, 24 Cal.4th at p. 501, 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 12 P.3d 720.) Finding the marketing program at issue in Gerawan I not materially different from the one in Glickman, at least for First Amendment purposes ( Gerawan I, supra, 24 Cal.4th at p. 508, 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 12 P.3d 720), the Gerawan I court held that program did not implicate, much less violate, the First Amendment. ( Gerawan I, supra, 24 Cal.4th at p. 497, 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 12 P.3d 720.) Turning to the California Constitution's free speech clause, the court found that the marketing program did indeed implicate that clause. It found article I's right to freedom of speech distinctive from the First Amendment right, as construed by the Glickman court, on essentially two grounds. First, the court found Glickman, on its own terms, unpersuasive. It noted the extensive criticism that the Glickman court had received in concluding that the marketing order at issue did not even implicate the First Amendment. (See Gerawan I, supra, 24 Cal.4th at pp. 501-505, 511-512, 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 12 P.3d 720.) The Gerawan I court opined that Glickman's legal component is driven not so much by principled reasoning as by ad hoc distinguishing. Its factual component is hardly better. The court, for example, found the Glickman majority's presumption that Gerawan and the rest `agree[d] with the central message of the speech that [was] generated by the generic [advertising], Glickman v. Wileman Brothers & Elliott, Inc., supra, 521 U.S. at p. 470, 117 S.Ct. 2130,' . . . betray[ed] a certain lack of sophistication, Gerawan I found, principally because producers who seek to develop their own brands may have that effort undermined by generic advertising and may therefore be said to disagree with that advertising. ( Gerawan I, supra, 24 Cal.4th at pp. 503-504, 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 12 P.3d 720.) The court found more persuasive the reasoning of Justice Souter's dissent: Justice Souter observed that the First Amendment's right to freedom of speech does not bar compelling a speaker to fund speech that he otherwise would not fund only when such speech would be political or ideological in character  only when, in other words, it would `engender' in him a `crisis of conscience' ( Glickman v. Wileman Brothers & Elliott, Inc., supra, 521 U.S. at p. 472 [117 S.Ct. 2130]) or `conflict with' his `freedom of belief' in such areas [citation]: Prior decisions such as Abood and its progeny including Keller happened to arise in the context of political or ideological speech  a mere `fortuity'  but did not bar their application to commercial speech. ( Glickman v. Wileman Brothers & Elliott, Inc., supra, 521 U.S. at p. 488 [117 S.Ct. 2130] (dis. opn. of Souter, J.).) The fact that, under such decisions, a person who has lawfully been compelled to associate with others may be compelled to fund even political or ideological speech without suffering a violation of the right in question does not mean that he can be so compelled without experiencing any implication of the right at all. [Citation.] ( Gerawan I, supra, 24 Cal.4th at p. 502, 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 12 P.3d 720.) The Gerawan I court noted that the weight of scholarly authority appeared to side with Justice Souter's Glickman dissent, at least as to whether Marketing Order No. 917 implicated the First Amendment. ( Gerawan I, supra, 24 Cal.4th at pp. 504-505, 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 12 P.3d 720.) The second basis for Gerawan I's departure from Glickman lay in the differences between article I and the First Amendment. Citing well-established case law, the Gerawan I court reaffirmed that article I's free speech clause is `broader' and `greater' than the First Amendment. ( Gerawan I, supra, 24 Cal.4th at p. 491, 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 12 P.3d 720.) More specifically, article I's right to freedom of speech, unlike the First Amendment's, is `unlimited' in scope. [Citations.] Whereas the First Amendment does not embrace all subjects, article I does indeed do so, in ipsissimis verbis: `Every person may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects . . . .' ( Id. at p. 493, 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 12 P.3d 720, italics in Gerawan I. ) The reference to all subjects obviously included commercial speech and therefore encompassed programs that compelled funding of speech. ( Ibid. ) The historical circumstances surrounding the adoption of the predecessor to article I in 1849 also supported this conclusion. In California . . . in 1849, the prevailing political, legal, and social culture was that of Jacksonian democracy. [Citations.] Jacksonian democracy was animated by `ideals of equality and open opportunity.' [Citation.] Those ideals worked themselves out in a `liberal, market-oriented, economic individualism.' [Citation.] What such individualism presupposed, and produced, was wide and unrestrained speech about economic matters generally, including, obviously, commercial affairs. ( Gerawan I, supra, 24 Cal.4th at p. 495, 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 12 P.3d 720.) The court further concluded that nothing in the history of the subsequent amendments to that section of the California Constitution in 1879, 1974, and 1980 evinced an intent to change the original understanding of the 1849 Constitution with respect to commercial speech. ( Gerawan I, supra, 24 Cal.4th at pp. 495-497, 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 12 P.3d 720.) An examination of the briefs in the present case, both of the parties and amicus curiae, reveals considerable disagreement about the meaning of Gerawan I. In particular, Gerawan and his amicus argue that Gerawan I stands for the proposition that commercial speech receives the same protection as political and ideological speech under article I, section 2(a)  that is, it is subject to the strictest scrutiny. The Secretary and his amicus curiae dispute this point. Part of this confusion may stem from the fact that while Gerawan I's discussion of article I, section 2(a) and its history is broad and far ranging, its actual holding is extremely narrow. As the Gerawan I court stated: Our conclusion, however, brings no conclusion to this cause. That the California Plum Marketing Program implicates Gerawan's right to freedom of speech under article I does not mean that it violates such right. But it does indeed raise the question. That question, in turn, raises others, including what test is appropriate for use in determining a violation. And that question, in its turn, raises still others as well, including what protection, precisely, does article I afford commercial speech, at what level, of what kind, and, perhaps `most difficult,' subject to what test. [Citation.] To address such questions belongs, in the first instance, to the Court of Appeal on remand. ( Gerawan I, supra, 24 Cal.4th at p. 517, 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 12 P.3d 720, first two italics added.) Thus, contrary to Gerawan's and amicus curiae's arguments, Gerawan I takes no position on the sort of constitutional protection the rights at issue in this case should receive. All the court held in Gerawan I is that a program that requires agricultural producers to fund nongovernmental commercial speech implicates article I's free speech clause, and that a court must conduct some unspecified inquiry into whether the program violates that clause. Although the Gerawan I court engaged in a general historical discussion, quoted in part above, in support of the position that compelled subsidization of commercial speech implicates the free speech clause ( Gerawan I, supra, 24 Cal.4th at pp. 494-497, 101 Cal.Rptr.2d 470, 12 P.3d 720), no specific constitutional test can be derived from that discussion.