Court Opinion

ID: 9430344
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:32.851197+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:24.134940
License: Public Domain

Justice Marshall,
concurring in the judgment.
In PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U. S. 74 (1980), we held that a State could, consistently with the Federal Constitution, prohibit the private owner of a shopping center from using state trespass law to exclude peaceful ex*22pressive activity in the open areas of the shopping center. Concurring in PruneYard, I viewed the State’s abrogation of the property owner’s traditional right to exclude as raising the question of how the Federal Constitution limits a State’s ability to redefine its common-law property rights. See id., at 92-93 (Marshall, J., concurring). Today we face a similar question. In the present case, California has taken from appellant the right to deny access to its property — its billing envelope — to a group that wishes to use that envelope for expressive purposes. Two significant differences between the State’s grant of access in this case and the grant of access in PruneYard lead me to find a constitutional barrier here that I did not find in the earlier case.
The first difference is the degree of intrusiveness of the permitted access. We noted in PruneYard: “[T]he shopping center by choice of its owner is not limited to the personal use of [its owner]. It is instead a business establishment that is open to the public to come and go as they please.” Id., at 87. The challenged rule did not permit a markedly greater intrusion onto the property than that which the owner had voluntarily encouraged, nor did it impair the commercial value of the property. Id., at 83; see also id., at 94 (Marshall, J., concurring).
In the present case, by contrast, appellant has never opened up its billing envelope to the use of the public.1 Ap*23pellant has not abandoned its right to exclude others from its property to the degree that the shopping center owner had done in PruneYard. Were appellant to use its billing envelope as a sort of community billboard, regularly carrying the messages of third parties, its desire to exclude a particular speaker would be deserving of lesser solicitude. As matters stand, however, appellant has issued no invitation to the general public to use its billing envelope for speech or for any other purpose.2 Moreover, the shopping center in PruneYard bore a strong resemblance to the streets and parks that are traditional public forums. People routinely gathered there, at the owner’s invitation, and engaged in a wide variety of activities. Adding speech to the list of those activities did not in any great way change the complexion of the property. The same is not true in this case.
The second difference between this case and PruneYard is that the State has chosen to give TURN a right to speak at the expense of appellant’s ability to use the property in ques*24tion as a forum for the exercise of its own First Amendment rights. While the shopping center owner in PruneYard wished to be free of unwanted expression, he nowhere alleged that his own expression was hindered in the slightest. In contrast, the present case involves a forum of inherently limited scope. By appropriating, four times a year, the space in appellant’s envelope that appellant would otherwise use for its own speech, the State has necessarily curtailed appellant’s use of its own forum. The regulation in this case, therefore, goes beyond a mere infringement of appellant’s desire to remain silent, see post, at 32-35 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting).
While the interference with appellant’s speech is, conced-edly, very slight, the State’s justification — the subsidization of another speaker chosen by the State — is insufficient to sustain even that minor burden. We have held that the State may use its own resources for subsidization, Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Washington, 461 U. S. 540 (1983), but that interest, standing alone, cannot justify interference with the speech of others. See Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 48-49 (1976) (per curiam); First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765, 790-792 (1978).3 In the *25instant case, the only state interest identified by appellees is ensuring that ratepayers are “expos[ed] to a variety of views,” App. to Juris. Statement A-17, in order to provide “the most complete understanding possible of energy-related issues,” id., at A-22. This is no different from the interest that we found insufficient to justify restraints on individual political expenditures in Buckley v. Valeo, supra. Even assuming that the State could assert a more compelling interest in, for example, curbing actual abuses of the ratemaking process, it has never demonstrated that its regulation is tailored to serve such an interest. Indeed, it disclaims any duty to make that showing, based on its conclusion that ratepayers “own” the extra space. See App. to Juris. Statement A-22. The regulation at issue here, therefore, differs significantly from the Securities and Exchange Commission proxy regulation cited by Justice Stevens, post, at 39.
In PruneYard, I recognized that the State may generally create or abrogate rights “ To attain a permissible legislative object.’” 447 U. S., at 92 (quoting Silver v. Silver, 280 U. S. 117, 122 (1929)). In the present case, the State has redefined a property right in the extra space in appellant’s billing envelope in such a way as to achieve a result — burdening the speech of one party in order to enhance the speech of another — that the First Amendment disallows. In doing so, moreover, it has sanctioned an intrusion onto appellant’s property that exceeds the slight incursion permitted in PruneYard. Under these circumstances, I believe that the State has crossed the boundary between constitutionally permissible and impermissible redefinitions of private property.
In reaching this conclusion, I do not mean to suggest that I would hold, contrary to our precedents, that the corporation’s First Amendment rights are coextensive with those of individuals, or that commercial speech enjoys the same pro*26tections as individual speech. In essentially all instances, the use of business property to carry out transactions with the general public will permit the State to restrict or mandate speech in order to prevent deception or otherwise protect the public’s health and welfare. In many instances, such as in PruneYard, business property will be open to the public to such an extent that the public’s expressive activities will not interfere with the owner’s use of property to a degree that offends the Constitution. The regulation at issue in this case, I believe, falls on the other side of the line. Accordingly, I join the Court’s judgment.

 The State seizes upon appellant’s status as a regulated monopoly in order to argue that the inclusion of postage and other billing costs in the utility’s rate base demonstrates that these items “belong” to the public, which has paid for them. However, a consumer who purchases food in a grocery store is “paying” for the store’s rent, heat, electricity, wages, etc., but no one would seriously argue that the consumer thereby acquires a property interest in the store. That the utility passes on its overhead costs to ratepayers at a rate fixed by law rather than the market cannot affect the utility’s ownership of its property, nor its right to use that property for expressive purposes, see Consolidated Edison Co. v. Public Service Comm’n of N. Y., 447 U. S. 530, 534, n. 1 (1980). The State could have concluded that the public interest would be best served by state own*23ership of utilities. Having chosen to keep utilities in private hands, however, the State may not arbitrarily appropriate property for the use of third parties by stating that the public has “paid” for the property by paying utility bills.
1 hasten to add that nothing in this opinion nor, as I understand it, the plurality’s opinion, addresses the issue whether the State may exclude the cost of mailing Progress from appellant’s rate base. See id., at 544 (MARSHALL, J., concurring). Indeed, appellant concedes that the State may force its shareholders to bear those costs.

 The State also argues that it frequently requires appellant to carry messages concerning utility ratemaking and the rights of utility consumers. These messages, however, do not include political speech, and are directly relevant to commercial transactions between the ratepayer and the utility. The State’s interest in requiring appellant to carry such messages is therefore particularly compelling. Cf. infra, at 24-25. Somewhat analogously, the State could not argue that, because it may demand access for the State’s agents to a private home to monitor compliance with health or safety regulations, see Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U. S. 523 (1967), it may also grant access to third parties for nongovernmental purposes.

 Justice Rehnquist’s dissent argues that a State may freely affect the mix of information available to the public, so long as it only “indirectly and remotely” affects a particular speaker’s contribution to that mix. See post, at 27. Even if I were to accept that proposition, I disagree with its application to this case.
While the interference with appellant’s speech is small, it is by no means indirect. TURN clearly has the first claim to the “extra space” during four months out of every year. Appellant may use its own — and physically limited — forum during those months only to the extent TURN chooses not to use it. This infringement differs from the limitation on campaign contributions in Buckley v. Valeo because the speech element of a contribution — the message of support for a candidate — was only indirectly related to the size of the contribution. 424 U. S., at 21. By definition, then, a limit on the size of contributions affected speech only indirectly. Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Washington, 461 U. S. 540 (1983), is likewise distinguishable. That case decided only that the *25Government could use its own funds to subsidize a preferred speaker. That subsidization caused no interference with anyone else’s speech, much less indirect and remote interference.