Court Opinion

ID: 9672743
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:59:29.584947+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:18.045018
License: Public Domain

Hood, J.
(dissenting). I must respectfully dissent. First, I do not agree that Commodities Export Co v Detroit, 116 Mich App 57; 321 NW2d 842 (1982), controls the decision in this case. Commodities limits its analysis to an inquiry of whether the plaintiff had a right under the United States Constitution’s First Amendment to distribute commercial handbills on privately owned property. In this case, we are asked to decide whether the Michigan Constitution, not the First Amendment, protects a citizen’s right to petition for a ballot initiative in the public area of a privately owned shopping mall.
*655The distinction is both legally and factually important. Legally, it is clear that the First Amendment does not protect the right to distribute handbills in a privately owned shopping center because state action denying that right is not involved. Hudgens v NLRB, 424 US 507; 96 S Ct 1029; 47 L Ed 2d 196 (1976). However, our appellate courts have not yet addressed the question whether the Michigan Constitution protects such action on private property.
Factually, Commodities dealt with the distribution of commercial advertisements in the parking area of a single, privately owned shop. The Court noted in Commodities, at 116 Mich App 67-68:
"The rights surrounding private property ownership, where the public is invited on the property for a limited purpose, cannot be extinguished when the activity does not comport with the public nature of the property. This is especially true where the speech involved is commercial handbilling.
"In the past, the United States Supreme Court has accorded commercial speech less protection than other forms of constitutionally guaranteed speech. Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp v Public Service Comm of New York, 447 US 557; 100 S Ct 2343; 65 L Ed 2d 341 (1980). Recently, First Amendment protections have been extended to purely commercial speech. Metromedia, Inc v San Diego, 453 US 490; 101 S Ct 2882; 69 L Ed 2d 800 (1981). However, in Metromedia, Inc, supra, 814, the Supreme Court made it clear that the distinction between commercial and noncommercial speech survives * * *.
"* * * Where decisions hold that even a public authority, against which the First Amendment protections are directed, has the right to reject commercial advertising, surely a private property owner’s rights cannot be infringed by allowing unconsented-to commercial advertising on its premises.” (Emphasis added.)
*656However, in this case the defendant attempted to express political speech in the public areas of a large shopping mall, a significantly different setting.
I would hold that the Michigan Constitution does protect defendant’s right to solicit signatures for an initiative petition in the public areas of a privately owned shopping mall. I find that federal, Michigan, and other state decisions support such a holding.
In PruneYard Shopping Center v Robins, 447 US 74; 100 S Ct 2035; 64 L Ed 2d 741 (1980), the Court held that, although the federal constitution extended no protection to the exercise of the right to free speech within large private shopping malls, the state courts were free to interpret their own constitutions to provide such protection, consistent with federal due process requirements. The Court affirmed Robins v PruneYard Shopping Center, 23 Cal 3d 899; 153 Cal Rptr 854; 592 P2d 341 (1979), in which the California Supreme Court held that its state’s constitutional provisions regarding free expression permitted a group of high school students to seek signatures for a petition to the United Nations opposing an "Anti-Zionism” resolution within the common areas of a large, privately owned shopping mall.
In its opinion affirming Robins, the Supreme Court found that the state court’s decision did not violate the due process rights of the mall owners. Although the "right to exclude others” from one’s property is a part of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment guarantees against taking property without due process and just compensation, before the court would find a compensable "taking” it must inquire into "the character of the governmental action, its economic impact, and its inter*657ference with reasonable investment-backed expectations”. PruneYard, supra, 447 US 82-83. The mall owners failed to demonstrate that the proposed activity would "impair the value or use of this property as a shopping center”. PruneYard, supra, 447 US 83. The mall owners did not show that the lower court’s decision was unreasonable, arbitrary, or capricious and that the means selected by the court had no real or substantial relation to its objective. Moreover, the state court permitted the mall owners to adopt reasonable time, place, and manner regulations to curtail expressive activities on their property.
In this case, there is even more than the constitutional protection of free speech at issue. Const 1963, art 1, § 5. Our constitution also provides:
"The people reserve to themselves the power to propose laws and to enact and reject laws, called the initiative, and the power to approve or reject laws enacted by the legislature, called the referendum.” Const 1963, art 2, § 9.
Thus, in this case we are dealing with not only the freedom of political, as opposed to commercial, speech but this state’s constitutional protection of a particular form of political speech: the right of every citizen to initiate law.
In Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, AFL-CIO v Wonderland Shopping Center, Inc, 370 Mich 547, 563, 572-573; 122 NW2d 785 (1963), an equally divided Supreme Court held, in an opinion by Justices Black and Smith, that the First Amendment and "our even more broadly worded” state constitution protected a union representative’s right to distribute handbills near the entrance of a clothing store in a shopping plaza, warning customers that the store sold nonunion-*658made goods. Although Wonderland was decided before Hudgens and thus is not precedential on the Fifth Amendment claim, its reliance on our state’s constitutional protections is still good law. The Court also recognized the special nature of the public areas of modern shopping centers as the equivalent to public markets of earlier days. Wonderland, supra, p 568.
With the exception of North Carolina, in State v Felmut, 302 NC 173; 273 SE2d 708 (1981), other states have followed the California Robins decision and found that their state constitutions protect freedom of political speech in the public areas of privately owned shopping malls or centers. See Batchelder v Allied Store International, Inc, 388 Mass 83; 445 NE2d 590 (1983); Alderwood Associates v Washington Environmental Council, 96 Wash 2d 230; 635 P2d 108 (1981), and Cologne v Westfarms Associates, 37 Conn Supp 90; 442 A2d 471 (1982). New Jersey courts find similar state constitutional rights protected on the property of privately owned colleges. Commonwealth v Tate, 495 Pa 158; 432 A2d 1382 (1981); State v Schmid, 84 NJ 535; 423 A2d 615 (1980), app dis 455 US 100; 102 S Ct 867; 70 L Ed 2d 855 (1982).
Particularly helpful in this case is the Aider-wood decision. The defendant in Alderwood, an environmental group, appealed a lower court ruling that enjoined it from soliciting for signatures on petitions supporting a voter initiative. The Washington Supreme Court reversed, first noting that PruneYard, supra, allows individuals to speak or petition in privately owned shopping centers if state law confers such a right and if its exercise does not unreasonably interfere with the private owner’s constitutional rights. Alderwood, supra, 96 Wash 2d 235. The Alderwood court then inter*659preted its own state constitution’s broad protection of free speech and its provision that reserved to the people the right to initiate legislation. The Alderwood Court noted that the state constitutional provisions did not mention "state action” as necessary to invoke their protections. Thus, those protections could be extended to speech on private property after a balancing of competing rights and other factors. The factors they weighed in the balance were (1) the use and nature of the private property and (2) the nature of the speech activity. As to the first factor, a shopping mall, unlike a single, privately owned store, has public areas the functional equivalent to downtown areas or other public forums. As to the second factor, the exercise of free speech that also involves the initiative process takes on additional constitutional significance. Alderwood, supra, 96 Wash 2d 244.
On balance, the Alderwood court found that defendant’s petitioning, with the plaintiffs right to put time, place, and manner restrictions on that petitioning, did not amount to a taking or infringement on the plaintiffs rights sufficient to uphold a finding of irreparable harm. I would adopt a similar balancing test and analysis in this case and hold that the trial court improperly granted plaintiff a permanent injunction.
Finally, the issue of whether defendant’s conduct violated the criminal trespass statute, MCL 750.552; MSA 28.820(1), is not before us in this challenge to the grant of equitable relief and should not be addressed by this Court in this decision.
I would reverse and remand.