Court Opinion

ID: 9749539
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:49:32.915644+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:50.579678
License: Public Domain

RAYE, J.
I fully concur in Justice Nicholson’s well-reasoned analysis and conclusion that the California Highway Patrol (CHP) may not rely on *874Vehicle Code sections 21465 and 21467 as authority to interfere with plaintiffs’ activities under the facts presented, but acted properly in dispersing plaintiffs under Vehicle Code section 2410.
I write separately to emphasize my disagreement with several aspects of my dissenting colleague’s views. I disagree with his cataclysmic vision of the havoc that will be wreaked when citizens are permitted to exercise their First Amendment rights on public property within sight of a freeway. I do not share his view of police power: that we presume police authority to act absent a constitutional prohibition to the contrary. And while I agree with the majority that we need not reach the issue in this case, I am not persuaded by the dissent’s public forum analysis.
The dissent evokes images of freeways strewn with human carcasses and wrecked automobiles—the detritus of high-speed collisions between drivers distracted by activity on freeway overpasses—overpasses teeming with demonstrators competing to display their messages to the motoring public. There is no basis for such wild imaginings. While the parties may have wished for a more expansive holding, our task is to decide the case before us. This is a case about four specific overpasses populated by a given number of protestors at particular points in time. Not all overpasses are the same. An overpass crossing Highway 99 in Turlock may be an effective protest platform, particularly if the target audience happens to be local citizens, but sign-waving protestors stationed on such an overpass would have a negligible impact on sparse freeway traffic. The same cannot be said of the urban overpasses at issue in this case. The dissent lumps them all together and insists that a single rule should apply to all.
The dissent’s conclusion in this regard seems premised on the unsuppofiable notion that signs on freeway overpasses inevitably disrupt traffic on the underlying freeway and on largely irrelevant principles of real property law. After acknowledging decisions by the United States Supreme Court that public streets are “traditional” and “quintessential” public forums, the dissent makes the imminently reasonable observation that freeways are not the type of streets the Supreme Court had in mind. Their attributes—limited access and high-speed traffic, among others—make them unsuitable for service as public forums. Up to this point the dissent’s reasoning is largely unassailable. What follows is not. The dissent then concludes, “Because freeways and government property within a freeway right-of-way, such as freeway overpasses, are not public forums,” restrictions on speech are permissible if reasonable. (Dis. opn., post, at p. 890, italics added.) This segue (or, more appropriately, giant leap) from freeways to freeway overpasses is *875unaccompanied by analysis of overpasses or any explanation as to why a freeway overpass—a public street that crosses over a freeway—should be treated the same as the freeway it crosses.
Only later does the dissent attempt to explain, and the explanation is totally unsatisfactory. Instead of the well-reasoned analysis of the function and characteristics of freeways supporting the dissent’s conclusion that freeways are unsuitable public forums, the dissent offers a primer on property law: “The owner of land in fee has the right to the surface and to everything permanently situated beneath or above it.” (Civ. Code, § 829.) The dissent is correct on this point of law but the point is meaningless. What matters is not who owns the overpass but the characteristics that make it an unsuitable public forum. No amount of legal sleight of hand can alter the simple fact that a freeway overpass is not a freeway.
The dissenting opinion’s analysis of the CHP’s authority is similarly flawed. Accusing the majority of placing the statutory cart before the constitutional horse, the dissent cites Perry Ed. Assn. v. Perry Local Educators’Assn. (1983) 460 U.S. 37, 44 [103 S.Ct. 948, 954, 74 L.Ed.2d 794, 804] for the proposition that the right of access will differ depending on the character of the property at issue. From this simple undisputed principle, the dissent concludes: “Accordingly, the initial, and pivotal, issue that must be resolved is whether freeways and freeway overpasses are public forum properties.” (Dis. opn., post, at p. 879.) The dissent thus insists that we must address the constitutional issue before we address the statutory question of whether the CHP is even empowered to act. I fear the dissent not only has the horse and cart inverted, but the cart is also detached from the horse. The CHP’s authority to act in the first instance is unrelated to the status of property as a public forum.
It is true that a lower standard is required of restrictions imposed on property that is not a public forum. “The state” has great authority to act in such an instance, but the CHP has not been ceded all of the state’s powers. It is simply an agent of government with limited, statutorily defined authority to act. We have been pointed to no statute restricting the access of pedestrians to freeway overpasses. Thus, before delving into difficult constitutional questions, it is fair to first ask what gives the CHP the authority to act as it did. Had plaintiffs’ demonstrators been removed from the freeway by employees of the Board of Fabric Care, we would inquire into that board’s authority to act. We cannot simply presume the CHP has such authority.
Finally, I concur with my colleague that we are not compelled to reach the question of whether a freeway overpass is a public forum. Our opinion *876makes clear that even assuming public forum rules apply, the facts in this case warrant the action taken by the CHP. The dissent complains that our opinion leaves prospective protestors to puzzle over the scope of the CHP’s authority. That result, however, is inevitable unless we conclude, as does the dissent, that an overpass is not a public forum. We are neither a legislature nor an enforcement agency. Our task is to review restraints enacted by the Legislature and standards of enforcement promulgated by administrative agencies. Where, as here, the authority to act is premised on an expansive statute such as Vehicle Code section 2410, which empowers action on a case-by-case basis, our review must necessarily be limited to the facts of the particular case. The parties are not left bereft of guidance; similar facts v/ill produce similar results. ■