Opinion ID: 2037553
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: free and equal elections

Text: The appellate court below rested its decision in part upon article III, section 3, of the Illinois Constitution, which provides that [a]ll elections shall be free and equal. (Ill. Const. 1970, art. III, § 3.) This provision was left unchanged by the Constitutional Convention of 1970. The Constitutional Commentary to the provision reports that the Committee on Suffrage and Constitutional Amendment endorsed, without reservation, the line of Illinois Supreme Court decisions, which applied the provision: `to the entire election process, from a candidate's efforts to gain access to the ballot, [citations]; to the people's right to nominate candidates, [citations]; to the freedom of the election process from fraud and voter intimidation, [citations]; to the counting of every properly cast ballot [citation].' Ill.Ann.Stat., 1970 Const., art.III, § 3, Constitutional Commentary, at 60 (Smith-Hurd 1971). There has been no previous Illinois case in which a defendant claimed that his rights under the free and equal elections provision were violated by his exclusion from private property. However, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts addressed the issue in Batchelder, where a political petitioner had been excluded from a large shopping center. ( Batchelder, 388 Mass. 83, 445 N.E.2d 590.) In determining that the petitioner's rights to free elections were violated, the court stated: [A] person needing signatures for ballot access requires personal contact with voters. He or she cannot reasonably obtain them in any other way. Reasonable access to the public is essential in ballot access matters. ( Batchelder, 388 Mass. at 92, 445 N.E.2d at 595.) The court then proceeded to weigh the property interests of the mall owner against the petitioner's right to free and equal elections. Because statistics showed that the shopping center was the most favorable area in the district to circulate petitions, the court found that the petitioner's rights outweighed those of the shopping center. The factual situation in Bathchelder is different from that in the case before us. Batchelder concerned one of the largest shopping centers in the country. The mall occupied the position of a town's central business center. Petitioners would not have had access to the same number of shoppers if they had stood outside the enclosed mall. Here, we have under consideration a single grocery store, where the public sidewalk was adjacent to the private property on which the defendant stood while soliciting signatures. Defendant urges us not to draw an arbitrary line in the cement. We find no need to do so, as the line between the public sidewalk and Dominick's pavement was visible before defendant entered Dominick's cart-control area. We believe that defendant would have had sufficient access to shoppers' signatures if he had stationed himself a few steps away, on the public sidewalk. The appellate court below cites an Oregon case as being almost identical in its facts with the case before us. ( Cargill, 100 Ore.App. 336, 786 P.2d 208.) Cargill concerned the rights of a solicitor to gather signatures on a political petition while on private commercial property. However, Cargill is distinguishable in two respects. First, the petition circulators stood on the store's private sidewalk, between the private parking lot and the department store's main entrance. There was no adjacent public sidewalk from which the defendants could have solicited shoppers' signatures. Second, the Cargill court based its decision on the primacy of the Oregon Constitution's initiative and referendum provisions. The court found that defendants' inability to collect sufficient signatures elsewhere than at the store could prevent several measures from appearing on the ballot. Thus, the court held that the defendants' activities were constitutionally protected. As we noted previously, defendant in this case could have collected signatures while on the public sidewalk adjacent to Dominick's. Moreover, we are not presented with the concern for initiative and referendum provisions that was critical to the Cargill decision. Thus, we find Cargill inapplicable to the case at bar. Moreover, this court has previously stated that the free and equal provisions of article III, section 3, of the Illinois Constitution are in effect those of the fourteenth amendment, and call for no more than the Federal Constitution in relation to equal protection. ( Fumarolo v. Chicago Board of Education (1990), 142 Ill.2d 54, 71, 153 Ill.Dec. 177, 566 N.E.2d 1283.) The test of the fourteenth amendment is whether the difference in treatment of individuals is an invidious discrimination. ( Schilb v. Kuebel (1971), 404 U.S. 357, 364, 92 S.Ct. 479, 484, 30 L.Ed.2d 502, 510.) We have found no evidence that Dominick's discriminated against defendant on the basis of his sex, race, national origin, or political preference. Further, the fourteenth amendment was intended to regulate only conduct by the States or their instrumentalities. ( Shelley, 334 U.S. at 13, 68 S.Ct. at 842, 92 L.Ed. at 1180.) We have found that there was no direct State action in this case and that Dominick's was not performing the function of a public forum. Acts of a private citizen pursuant to his right to petition are only conditionally privileged, and must be considered in light of the rights of others. ( Arlington Heights National Bank v. Arlington Heights Federal Savings & Loan Association (1967), 37 Ill.2d 546, 550-51, 229 N.E.2d 514.) The right to private property is an inherent right ( Meadowmoor, 371 Ill. at 393, 21 N.E.2d 308) which is protected by the Illinois Constitution (Ill. Const. 1970, art. I, § 2). We conclude that defendant's rights under the free and equal elections provisions of the Illinois Constitution were not violated in this case. For the reasons set out above, we hold that Dominick's use of the criminal trespass to land statute to exclude defendant from its property did not violate defendant's rights under the free speech or the free and equal elections provisions of the Illinois Constitution. Consequently, we reverse the judgment of the appellate court, and affirm the judgment of the circuit court. Appellate court reversed; circuit court affirmed.