Court Opinion

ID: 9419233
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:47:48.543984+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:16.498067
License: Public Domain

*729Mr. Justice Black,
dissenting, with whom
Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Murphy concur.
The petitioners sought to convey to the public certain information. The injunction here sustained imposed two restraints on their doing so: (1) it enjoined them from picketing the respondent’s cafe; (2) it enjoined them from carrying banners in front of the respondent’s cafe, banners which contained inscriptions telling the public that the respondent had awarded a building contract to a man who was unfair to organized labor.
One member of the petitioner unions at a time peacefully walked in front of the respondent’s cafe, carrying such a banner. It is not contended that the inscriptions were untruthful, nor that the language used was immoderate. There was no violence threatened or apprehended. Passers-by were not molested. It is clear from the opinion of the Texas Court of Civil Appeals that the injunction against picketing was granted not because of any law directly aimed at picketing — Texas has no statute against picketing as such — nor to prevent violence, disorder, breach of the peace, or congestion of the streets. The immediate purpose of the injunction was to frustrate the union’s objective of conveying information to that part of the public which came near the respondent’s place of business, an objective which the court below decided was a violation of Texas antitrust laws. Conveying this truthful information in the manner chosen by the union was calculated to, and did, injure the respondent’s business. His business was injured because many of those whom the information reached were sympathetic with the union side of the controversy and declined to patronize the respondent’s cafe or have any other business transactions with him. Does injury of this kind to the respondent’s business justify the Texas courts in thus restricting freedom of expression?
*730I am unable to agree that the controversy which prompted the unions to give publicity to the facts was no more than a private quarrel between the union and the non-union contractor. Whether members or non-members of the building trades unions are employed is known to depend to a large extent upon the attitude of building contractors. Their attitude can be greatly influenced by those with whom they do business. Disputes between one or two unions and one contractor over the merits and justice of union as opposed to non-union systems of employment are but a part of the nationwide controversy over the subject. I can see no reason why members of the public should be deprived of any opportunity to get information which might enable them to use their influence to tip the scales in favor of the side they think is right.
If there had been any doubt before, I should have thought that our decision in Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U. S. 88, settled the question. There we said at pages 102-104: “In the circumstances of our times the dissemination of information concerning the facts of a labor dispute must be regarded as within that area of free discussion that is guaranteed by the Constitution. . . . Free discussion concerning the conditions in industry and the causes of labor disputes appears to us indispensable to the effective and intelligent use of the processes of popular government to shape the destiny of modern industrial society. The issues raised by regulations, such as are challenged here, infringing upon the right of employees effectively to inform the public of the facts of a labor dispute are part of this larger problem. ... It may be that effective exercise of the means of advancing public knowledge may persuade some of those reached to refrain from entering into advantageous relations with the business establishment which is the scene of the dispute. . . . But the group in power at any moment may not impose penal sanctions on *731peaceful and truthful discussion of matters of public interest merely on a showing that others may thereby be persuaded to take action inconsistent with its interests.”
Whatever injury the respondent suffered here resulted from the peaceful and truthful statements made to the public that he had employed a non-union contractor to erect a building. This information, under the Thornhill case, the petitioners were privileged to impart and the public was entitled to receive. It is one thing for a state to regulate the use of its streets and highways so as to keep them open and available for movement of people and property, Schneider v. State, 308 U. S. 147, 160; or to pass general regulations as to their use in the interest of public safety, peace, comfort, or convenience, Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 306-307; or to protect its citizens from violence and breaches of the peace by those who are upon them, Thornhill v. Alabama, supra, 105. It is quite another thing, however, to “abridge the constitutional liberty of one rightfully upon the street to impart information through speech or the distribution of literature. . . .” Schneider v. State, supra, 160. The court below did not rest the restraints imposed on these petitioners upon the state’s exercise of its permissible powers to regulate the use of its streets or the conduct of those rightfully upon them. Instead, it barred the petitioners from using the streets to convey information to the public, because of the particular type of information they wished to convey. In so doing, it directly restricted the petitioners’ rights to express themselves publicly concerning an issue which we recognized in the Thornhill case to be of public importance. It imposed the restriction for the reason that the public’s response to such information would result in injury to a particular person’s business, a reason which we said in the Thornhill case was insufficient to justify curtailment of free expression.
*732The injunction is defended, however, on the ground that the petitioners have been prohibited from passing information to the public at only some, but not at all, places. It may be that the petitioners are left free to inform the public at other places or in other ways. Possibly they might, at greater expense, reach the public over the radio or through the newspapers, although, if the theory of the court below be correct, it would seem that they could be enjoined from using these means of communication, too, to persuade people not to patronize the respondent’s cafe. In any event, “one is not to have the exercise of his liberty of expression in appropriate places abridged on the plea that it may be exercised in some other place.” Schneider v. State, supra, 163.
Accepting the Constitutional prohibition against any law “abridging the freedom of speech or of the press” — a prohibition made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment — “as a command of the broadest scope that explicit language, read in the context of a liberty-loving society, will allow,” Bridges v. California, 314 U. S. 252, 263, I think the judgment should be reversed.