Court Opinion

ID: 9458071
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:42:17.546789+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:37.760224
License: Public Domain

WISDOM, Circuit Judge
(concurring specially):
42 U.S.C. § 1981 provides that “[a] 11 persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State ... to make and enforce contracts . . . as is enjoyed by *1123white citizens.” § 1981 prohibits both private discrimination in the making of contracts and officially-supported discrimination as well. Sanders v. Dobbs Houses, Inc., 5 Cir. 1970, 431 F.2d 1097, reh. den. (en banc) 431 F.2d 1101. See also, e. g., Scott v. Young, 4 Cir. 1970, 421 F.2d 143, cert. den. 398 U.S. 929, 90 S.Ct. 1820, 26 L.Ed.2d 91; Waters v. Wisconsin Steel Works, 7 Cir. 1970, 427 F.2d 476, cert. den. sub nom. United Order of American Bricklayers & Stone Masons v. Waters, 400 U.S. 911, 91 S.Ct. 137, 27 L.Ed.2d 151; Cf. Sullivan v. Little Hunting Park, Inc., 1969, 396 U.S. 229, 90 S.Ct. 400, 24 L.Ed.2d 386; Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 1968, 392 U.S. 409, 88 S.Ct. 2186, 20 L.Ed.2d 1189 (interpreting 42 U.S.C. § 1982).
The plaintiff Cook argues that he was denied the same right to “make and enforce” a contract with the Advertiser as is enjoyed by white residents of Montgomery. Cook’s argument is appealing. An applicant takes the time and the trouble to record in writing and deliver to the Advertiser information about his impending marriage. In return, the paper bears the expense of publishing the applicant’s wedding announcement, thereby providing the applicant and his family with flattering and enjoyable publicity. Though no cash is exchanged, each side incurs a detriment and each side receives a benefit. One could say that the Advertiser has promulgated an offer for a unilateral contract, by communicating to the white residents of the Montgomery area that it will promise to print their announcements if they provide the necessary information. When the information is presented to the paper, a contract is formed, or so the argument might run; a promise is exchanged for performance.
Yet the argument proceeds from a mistaken premise. Not every exchange of conferred benefits creates a contract. In this case Cook cannot succeed in demonstrating the formation of a contract between the Advertiser and Montgomery residents simply because the residents provide the Advertiser with information and the advertiser provides the residents with publicity. The question, rather, is whether Montgomery residents possess any enforceable right to publication of their wedding announcements once they render to the paper what the paper asks of them. A contract “always creat[es] a special right in personam, a right in the promisee against the promisor, with the correlative special duty in the promi-sor to the promisee of rendering the performance promised.” Corbin on Contracts, § 4 (1963 ed.).
I do not believe that delivery of the requested information to the Advertiser creates in any applicant the right to require the paper to publish his announcement, or any right to damages if the announcement is not published. My conclusion is shaped by, if not compelled by, the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press. It is most unlikely that any court in our land could constitutionally enforce a “promise” by a newspaper to publish any particular item of news. See Shelley v. Kraemer, 1948, 334 U.S. 1, 68 S.Ct. 836, 92 L.Ed. 1161. For the determination of what news is — the selectivity of the press — lies close to the heart of a press that may speak, or not speak, as it sees fit. Even if a newspaper stooped to sell its news coverage for hard cash, I suppose the most a frustrated buyer would be entitled to would be a refund of the dollars he had parted with.
It is more accurate to describe a newspaper’s “promise” to publish any particular item as a “promise” that is conditioned on the newspaper’s informed discretion as to what is news — and one which is plainly so understood by the public. When a paper publishes scholarship announcements, silver wedding anniversary stories, earnings reports on local businesses, athletic results, and even political interviews, it implicitly “promises” the focal individual who gives of his time that the paper will incur the expense of crafting, publishing, and disseminating an account of the individual’s accomplishments, happy coincidences, or whatever. Only occasionally *1124does such a story fall through; for example, regular publication is the rule for wedding announcements of most if not all white residents of Montgomery. But it is well understood by all who furnish information to a newspaper that the object of their efforts may or may not come to fruition, and that it will be left to the informed choice of the paper’s editors. In short, I would say that the “offer” for a unilateral “contract” communicated by the Advertiser is an offer to publish on such terms as it sees fit. It is an offer to exchange only an unenforceable promise to publish. Black citizens, then, have “the same right . to make and enforce contracts . as is enjoyed by white citizens”. Neither white citizens nor black citizens form enforceable contracts of publication with the Advertiser.
Cook argues vehemently that we should at least require a trial to determine whether the publication of wedding announcements is so “mechanical” and arguably therefore so “commercial” as to fall beyond the prerogatives of a free press. But Cook has simply culled a characteristic superficially common to both commercial advertising and to these wedding announcements and asked us to hold that both must be treated alike for purposes of the First Amendment. Even assuming that the layout of the wedding announcements is mechanical, a determination of newsworthiness —however warped — underlies the Advertiser’s decision to print more white wedding announcements than black ones. A similar determination underlies the printing of obituaries, sports reports, church announcements, and any number of other accounts of events which may be printed in highly homogeneous fashion from day to day. Mechanical layout is not a reliable indicator that the paper is not exercising some form of editorial discretion in deciding what to print. I think the First Amendment protects that editorial discretion, however perverse may be the manner of its exercise.
It is true that commercial advertising, once accepted for printing, is subject to congressional regulation. See United States v. Hunter, D.Md.1971, 324 F.Supp. 529. But that does not mean that routine news stories, such as wedding announcements, are to be subject to Congressional regulation. Commercial advertising is a marketplace form of communication for purposes of the First Amendment: the stuff of the communication is prices, wages, buying and selling. Commercial advertising is commerce. Like news, people read commercial advertising, and read it with interest, .but it is not news because people read it any more than news is commercial advertising because it is printed in routine fashion. I see nothing to be gained by requiring a trial which might enable Cook to prove that the editorial techniques which lead to publication of wedding announcements in the Advertiser are mechanical. Those stories are still news stories and they are not commercial advertising.
I concur in the Court’s conclusion that no contract is formed between the Advertiser and those who submit wedding announcements to the paper for publication.