Court Opinion

ID: 9728951
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:19:46.670295+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:53.299497
License: Public Domain

GARIBALDI, J.,
dissenting.
Today the Court holds that the New Jersey Constitution requires that owners of privately-owned-and-operated shopping malls who invite the public onto their property for commercial purposes must allow the public free access to that property to engage in unrestricted expressional activities, including, through the distribution of leaflets and petitions to shoppers, the promotion of various political or social views. To reach that conclusion, the majority distorts the test announced in State v. Schmid, 84 N.J. 535, 563, 423 A.2d 615 (1980); dismisses completely the rights of private-property owners to regulate and control the use of their own property; disregards the trial court’s findings of fact, developed after an extensive eleven-day trial; and instead relies primarily on old theories that the United States Supreme Court and most other state courts long ago discarded.
Under the majority’s rudderless standard, whether property is owned privately or publicly is irrelevant; whether the message is discordant with the private property’s use and purpose likewise makes no difference; and whether less-convenient but equally-accessible and -effective means of distribution exist is of no moment. So long as the private property, here a shopping mall, offers an opportunity for many people to congregate, the private-property owners must grant those people free access for expressional activity, regardless of the message or of its disruptive effect. Although the Court duly notes that such access will be subject to reasonable restrictions of time, place, and manner, ante at 782-783, 650 A.2d at 376-379, its opinion reveals that the restrictions will be minimal and will present more problems and lawsuits than they will solve.
*391I
The United States Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment allows the owners of private shopping malls to bar the distribution of political literature on mall property. See PruneYard Shopping Ctr. v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74, 100 S.Ct. 2035, 64 L.Ed.2d 741 (1980); Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U.S. 507, 96 S.Ct. 1029, 47 L.Ed.2d 196 (1976); Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551, 92 S.Ct. 2219, 33 L.Ed.2d 131 (1972). However, the Supreme Court has held that a state’s constitution may furnish an independent basis that surpasses the guarantees of the federal constitution in protecting individual rights of free expression and assembly. PruneYard, supra, 447 U.S. at 81, 100 S.Ct. at 2039-40, 64 L.Ed.2d at 752. The vast majority of states do not require that privately-owned shopping malls grant free access for expressional activity on their property. Ante at 349-350, 650 A.2d at 769.
Four provisions of Article I of the New Jersey Constitution are at issue: Paragraph 1, which concerns the unalienable right to acquire, possess, and protect property; Paragraph 20, which provides that individual persons or private corporations cannot take private property for public use without just compensation; Paragraph 6, which gives the right to speak, write, and publish freely; and Paragraph 18, which guarantees the right to assemble. We addressed the conflict between those provisions in Schmid, supra, 84 N.J. 535, 423 A.2d 615. However, breaking with our decision in that case, the majority engages in no balancing of those competing constitutional provisions; instead, the majority relies on only the free-speech and assembly provisions, ante at 332-333, 650 A 2d at 760, ignoring completely the private-property provisions. In so doing, it turns its back on our holding in Schmid.
Schmid involved a person’s free-speech rights on the private property of Princeton University. Although situated on private property, Princeton was traditionally a forum for the free exchange of ideas, and Princeton endorsed that tradition as part of its educational mission. We therefore found it appropriate to permit Schmid free access to the University’s private property to *392express his political views. Rather than endorse ad hoc determinations, we established a rational test under the New Jersey Constitution that balanced the rights of private-property owners and the expressional freedom of others on that private property.
[T]he test to be applied to ascertain the parameters of the rights of speech and assembly upon privately owned property and the extent to which such property reasonably can be restricted to accommodate these rights involves several elements. This standard must take into account (1) the nature, purposes, and primary use of such private property, generally, its “normal” use, (2) the extent and nature of the public’s invitation to use that property, and (3) the purpose of the expressional activity undertaken upon such property in relation to both the private and public use of the property.
[84 NJ. at 563, 423 A.2d 615.]
Using a test essentially the same as Schmid, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court established, in Commonwealth v. Tate, 495 Pa. 158, 432 A.2d 1382 (1981),. “a limiting rationale for applying [the Pennsylvania] constitution’s rights of speech and assembly to property private in name but used as a forum for public debate.” Western Pa. Socialist Workers 1982 Campaign v. Connecticut Gen. Life Ins. Co., 512 Pa. 23, 515 A.2d 1331, 1336 (1986) (discussing Tate). The Tate court overturned a trespass conviction for distributing pamphlets on a college campus. 432 A.2d at 1391. Yet when the court reviewed a subsequent case concerning an alleged constitutional right of access to a shopping mall, it recognized that unlike a university, the shopping mall was not a public forum for political expression. Western Pa. Socialist Workers, supra, 515 A.2d at 1337. The court found that the mall “is operated as a market place for the exchange of goods and services but not as a market place for the exchange of ideas.” Ibid. That rationale is entirely consistent with the Schmid Court’s own finding that “Princeton University’s raison d’etre is more consonant with free speech and assembly principles than a shopping center’s purposes might be * * 84 N.J. at 551, 423 A.2d 615. Unlike universities, shopping malls are not public forums dedicated to public use or to the exchange of ideas.
*393II
Although the majority alleges that it is adhering to Schmid, its opinion discloses that it is not. Indeed, the majority has forgotten the primary premise of Schmid, that a balance must be found between the rights of private-property owners and the expressional freedom of others on that property. A proper application of Schmid supports the trial court’s judgment, which the Appellate Division affirmed, that the mall owners may bar Coalition from distributing its leaflets in the malls.
After a close and careful examination of the normal use of each mall and the public invitation each mall extended, the trial court set forth its factual findings. The first prong of the Schmid test requires a court to take into account the nature, purposes, and primary use of the private property — its “normal” use. In that regard, the trial court concluded:
It is this court’s opinion that that question may be answered unequivocally. The nature, purpose and primary use of the malls is commercial. The shopping malls are retail establishments, constructed, designed and maintained to do business and make a profit. I did not hear one fact at trial which controverts or contradicts this finding. The plaintiff offered no proofs which will lead this court to any other conclusion.
[266 N.J.Super. 195, 200, 628 A.2d 1094 (Ch.Div.1991) (emphasis added).]
Moreover, the trial court found “from all of the credible evidence [that] has been offered at this trial that each of these ten malls has dedicated its facilities and property to its primary purpose, that is, business and commercial ventures.” Ibid.
In respect of the second Schmid factor, the extent and nature of the public’s invitation to use the private property, the trial court stated:
From the credible evidence offered by the defendants, that is, the testimony of mall managers, designers and planners, I find that the public’s invitation to each of the defendant malls is for the purpose of the owners’ and tenants’ business and does not extend to the activities of leafletting or the distribution of literature.
[Id at 203, 628 A.2d 1094 (emphasis added).]
Additionally, the trial court determined that “the primary purpose of each and every one of the activities listed [e.g., free concerts, Earth Day celebrations, and Girl Scout Cookie sales] * * * is to *394draw people to the mall and thereby maximize sales and increase profits.” Id. at 202, 628 A.2d 1094.
Despite the trial court’s findings, the majority baldly asserts that the mall owners issued an invitation to the public to use their private property “to do what they please” and granted “practically unlimited permitted public uses * * * on their property.” Ante at 363, 650 A.2d at 776. Under the majority’s reasoning, the nature and extent of the invitation is of no moment. By the majority’s analysis, any time the public is invited onto large, privately-owned property, it becomes a place to congregate and therefore becomes the functional equivalent of a downtown area. In Lloyd Corp., supra, the United States Supreme Court rejected the “functional equivalent” analysis, finding:
The invitation is to come to the Center to do business with the tenants. It is true that facilities at the Center are used for certain meetings and for various promotional activities. The obvious purpose, recognized widely as legitimate and responsible business activity, is to bring potential shoppers to the Center, to create a favorable impression, and to generate goodwill. There is no open-ended invitation to the public to use the Center for any and all purposes, however incompatible with the interests of both the stores and the shoppers whom they serve.
[407 U.S. at 564-65, 92 S.Ct at 2227, 33 L.Ed.2d at 140.]
As the Supreme Court further explained, “Nor does property lose its private character merely because the public is generally invited to use it for designated purposes.” Id. at 569, 92 S.Ct. at 2229, 33 L.Ed.2d at 143. See also Schmid, supra, 84 N.J. at 561, 423 A.2d 615.
Ignoring the trial court’s detañed factual findings, the majority rewrites Schmid, lumps the first two factors together into one, and continually misapprehends the test. Ante at 356, 650 A.2d at 772. The majority repeatedly refers to the first factor as the “normal” use, but ignores the language prior to that: “the nature, purposes and primary use of the private property.” The primary use of a shopping mall is shopping, an obvious fact that the majority faüs to understand.
Indeed, strikingly absent from the majority opinion is any awareness that the primary users of shopping malls are shoppers.
*395We should not lose sight of the fact that persons who own and operate shopping malls are merchants. As such they should not be required to provide forum, place, or occasion for speech making, petition signing, parades, or cracker barrels, to discuss local or global events. They are in business for business sake. They are not municipalities, states, or villages, and however romantic it may be to believe that the public repair to these galvanic places, of a Saturday morning, for more than bread and salt, they are not yet instruments of the state.
[Western Pa. Socialist Workers, supra, 515 A.2d at 1341 (McDermott, J., concurring).]
In contrast to the purpose of a shopping mall, the primary purpose of a university is to educate, ie., to increase the wealth of human knowledge, which can be done only through discourse and discussion, free and open debate. That is the significant difference between Princeton University and The Mall at Short Hills. Shopping can be accomplished even with mouths shut and minds closed.
The majority ignores any distinction between the purpose of Princeton and the purpose of a mall. “We need not, however, examine what a dedication to the public for public discussion really means, for there is no property more thoroughly ‘dedicated’ to public use than these regional and community shopping centers * * Ante at 355, 650 A.2d at 771. Therefore, under the majority’s reasoning, whether the property, like Princeton University, was dedicated to the public for public discussion is irrelevant. All that matters is that the property was open to the public, as is a shopping mall or any other large gathering space. An example of a publiely-aceessible place that will become an open forum for expression under the majority’s analysis is Great Adventure Theme Park. That result is plainly absurd.
The third prong of the Schmid analysis directs a court to consider the “purpose of the expressional activity undertaken upon such property in relation to both the private and public use of the property.” 84 N.J. at 563, 423 A.2d 615. That requires determining “whether the expressional activities undertaken * * * are discordant in any sense with both the private and public uses of the [property at issue].” Id. at 565, 423 A.2d 615. The trial court found that the “plaintiffs have not met their burden of proving *396that their activities are not discordant with both the public and private uses to which these shopping malls are dedicated.” 266 N.J.Super, at 204, 628 A.2d 1094.
Obviously, the expressed purpose of plaintiffs’ activity was to oppose the war in the Middle East, a purpose totally unrelated to the mall owners’ commercial purposes and to their invitation to the public to shop there. Additionally, confrontations between groups advocating opposing views on a controversial political or social topic are likely, and those groups’ purposes will clearly be discordant with shopping. The abortion debate is an easily-identifiable issue to consider under the Court’s opinion. Clearly, a mall allowing a pro-choice group to distribute pamphlets will face opposition from pro-life groups. Yet under the majority’s opinion, a mall owner could not restrict such groups from its private property.
When advocates press hotly-contested political and social issues, confrontation is an easily-foreseen outcome. In Cologne v. Westfarms Associates, 192 Conn. 48, 469 A.2d 1201 (1984), a mall refused to permit members of the Ku Klux Klan to rally there. After the Elan’s departure, however, a number of anti-Klan demonstrators, responding to reports of the intended appearance of the Klan, engaged in a heated demonstration outside the mall building. Police from several area towns and the state police were necessary to bring the situation under control. The demonstration resulted in the closing of some shopping-mall doors for the day.
As one of the defendants stated in its brief:
Should the Ku Klux Klan in their flowing white robes or the Black Separatists in their paramilitary gear be permitted on the mall’s property? These groups would offend even the most tolerant of shoppers. What shopper does not have an opinion on abortion, so that same question applies to pro-choice and pro-life advocates with their gruesome displays. Should an animal rights group, regardless of its graphic illustrations, be permitted near a pet shop or fur salon? Should the Vietnam Veterans and SANE be permitted to conduct activities on the same day in proximity to each other? What standards should a mall manager use when considering the graphic portrayal on a placard, when measuring the strong language in a leaflet or when evaluating the appropriateness of a costume or *397clothing? Aside from “controversial” issues, a host of content-based questions arise once politicians, religious groups, charities and “causes” invade the mall.
Each mall owner will have to answer those subjective questions, as well as many others, on a daily basis. Although the majority recognizes the difficulty in preparing regulations and procedures concerning leaf letting in the malls, ante at 379, 650 A.2d at 784 (granting sixty day stay), they provide no standards for the mall owners to use in resolving those problems. Moreover, regardless of the standards used, each mall owner will be second-guessed and litigation concerning the private owner’s decision will ensue. Public officials may have to face those issues in granting parade permits, but private-property owners should not be forced to decide those value-laden questions.
The morass that the majority opinion will produce is already demonstrated in the troubles that arise when public officials must determine what constitute legitimate time, place, and manner restrictions on the free expression of ideas on public property. See, e.g., National Socialist Party of Am. v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43, 97 S.Ct. 2205, 53 L.Ed.2d 96 (1977). Private-property owners should not be compelled to face the same challenges when they decide which groups may or may not champion their causes at these privately-owned-and-operated shopping malls.
Ill
To circumvent the detailed and meticulous findings of the trial court, the majority departs from the Schmid test and argues that shopping malls are the “functional equivalent” of the traditional downtown business districts or town squares. Ante at 347, 361-362, 650 A.2d at 767, 774-775. In support of that theory, the majority relies on “common knowledge” of the Court outside the record, ignoring the factual findings of the trial court and evidence that many of the towns in Essex, Hudson, and Morris Counties around the malls have become more, not less, vibrant.
Under the majority’s theory, private property becomes municipal land and private-property owners become the government. *398The United States Supreme Court discredited that proposition over twenty years ago, Lloyd Corp., supra, 407 U.S. 551, 92 S.Ct. 2219, 33 L.Ed.2d 131, and likewise almost every state court that has considered it has discarded it. See, e.g., Fiesta Mall Venture v. Mecham Recall Comm., 159 Ariz. 371, 767 P.2d 719 (Ct.App.1989); Cologne, supra, 469 A.2d 1201; Citizens for Ethical Gov’t, Inc. v. Gwinnett Place Assocs., 260 Ga. 245, 392 S.E.2d 8 (1990); Woodland v. Michigan Citizens Lobby, 423 Mich. 188, 378 N.W.2d 337 (1985); SHAD Alliance v. Smith Haven Mall, 66 N.Y.2d 496, 488 N.Y.S.2d 99, 488 N.E.2d 1211 (1985); State v. Felmet, 302 N.C. 173, 273 S.E.2d 708 (1981); Eastwood Mall v. Slanco, 68 Ohio St.3d 221, 626 N.E.2d 59 (1994); Western Pa. Socialist Workers, supra, 512 Pa. 23, 515 A.2d 1331; Charleston Joint Venture v. McPherson, 308 S.C. 145, 417 S.E.2d 544 (1992); Southcenter Joint Venture v. National Democratic Policy Comm., 113 Wash.2d 413, 780 P.2d 1282 (1989); Jacobs v. Major, 139 Wis.2d 492, 407 N.W.2d 832 (1987).
To reach its conclusion, the Court relies on the long-overruled statement in Logan Valley that shopping centers are the functional equivalent of downtown areas. See Amalgamated Food Employees Union Local 590 v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U.S. 308, 318, 88 S.Ct. 1601, 1608, 20 L.Ed.2d 603, 612 (1968). The Logan Valley Court, in turn, based its holding on Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501, 66 S.Ct. 276, 90 L.Ed. 265 (1946), and found an analogy between the sidewalks and parking areas of a shopping mall and the company town in Marsh. As we noted in Schmid, supra, 84 N.J. at 550, 423 A.2d 615, Lloyd Corp. repudiated Logan Valley. Nevertheless, the majority, like the Logan Valley Court, contends that plaintiffs here should have access to the shopping malls just as the Court gave the petitioner in Marsh access to the business district. Indeed, the majority relies on the discredited reasoning of Logan Valley and of the dissents in Lloyd Corp. and Hudgens. Ante at 366, 367, 368, 373, 650 A.2d at 777, 777, 778, 780.
Although I question whether Marsh still has validity, a “company town” is easily distinguishable from a shopping mall. Justice *399Black, who wrote Marsh, aptly pointed out the difference in his Logan Valley dissent:
But Marsh was never intended to apply to this kind of situation---- I can find very little resemblance between the shopping center involved in this case and Chickasaw, Alabama.
... [T]his reasoning completely misreads Marsh and begs the question. The question is, Under what circumstances can private property be treated, as though it were public? ... I can find nothing in Marsh which indicates that if one of these features is present, e.g., a business district, this is sufficient for the Court to confiscate a part of an owner’s private property and give its use to people who want to picket on it.
[391 U.S. at 330-32, 88 S.Ct. at 1615, 20 L.Ed.2d at 619-20 (emphasis' added).]
The United States Supreme Court adopted that position in Lloyd Corp., effectively rejecting Logan Valley's “functional equivalent” rationale. 407 U.S. at 569, 92 S.Ct. at 2229, 33 L.Ed.2d at 143; see also Fiesta Mall, supra, 159 Ariz. 371, 767 P.2d 719 (rejecting functional equivalent argument). To borrow from Lloyd Corp., “the instant case provides no comparable assumption or exercise of municipal functions or powers.” Ibid. Additionally, the Fiesta Mall court, relying on Lloyd Corp., found that shopping malls
are not the functional equivalent of towns. They are simply areas in which a large number of retail businesses is grouped together for convenience and efficiency. Their sole purpose is for shopping, and appellant’s argument that they are opened early for joggers and walkers, that large numbers of people are present in them each day, that occasionally non-commercial activities take place in them and that people enjoy air-conditioned comfort in them during Phoenix’s scorching summers does not change that basic fact.
[159 Ariz. at 376, 767 P.2d at 724.]
Relying on the functional-equivalent test, yet paying lip service to Schmid, the Court writes:
No such sensitivity exists in this case; there is no need to carefully calibrate the risk of damaging the mission of these centers, for the risk is practically nonexistent. More than that, the constitutional obligation in this case arises from what we have come to recognize as the essential nature of regional shopping centers— their all-inclusive uses and their corresponding all-embracing implied invitation to the public. For regional shopping centers, the implied expressional invitation is part of their nature, solidly embedded in their inescapable mission as the intentional successors to downtown business districts and their basic profitmaking purpose. We foresee no likely change in that essential nature that would affect the elements of the standard or the ultimate balance between free speech and property rights.
*400[Ante at 364-365, 650 A.2d at 776].
The inescapable mission of shopping malls is not to be the successor to downtown business districts; rather, it is to provide a comfortable and conducive atmosphere for shopping, a mission into which mall owners have invested large sums and energy.
Common sense also dictates that privately-owned-and-operated shopping malls are not the functional equivalent of downtown business districts. They are not “replica[s] of the community itself.” Ante at 360, 650 A.2d at 774. Shopping malls do not have housing, town halls, libraries, houses of worship, hospitals, or schools. Nor do they contain the small stores, such as the corner grocer, that used to serve as the forum for exchange of ideas. Indeed, most shopping malls do not allow people even to walk their dogs there.
The shopping mall is not a community. There is no “mayor of the mall.” Shoppers do not elect a common council. They do not have a say in the day-to-day affairs of the mall, nor do they expect one. They do not visit the mall to be informed or to inform others of social or political causes; they go to shop. Even though the malls sponsor community events, visits from Santa, and orchestral concerts, visitors do not mistake them for grassroots gathering places, Santa’s Workshop, or a mecea of the arts or culture. See, e.g., Southcenter Joint Venture, supra, 780 P.2d at 1292 (“[Shopping malls are concerned with just one aspect of their patrons’ lives — shopping.”); Jacobs, supra, 407 N.W.2d at 845 (“Opening the mall ‘avenues’ would be like opening the private businesses in the Marsh community. Since neither has an essentially public nature, we cannot hold them subject to the same constitutional requirements with which public property must comply.”).
Plaintiffs, and the majority, also rely on this Court’s decision in State v. Shack, 58 N.J. 297, 277 A.2d 369 (1971). Ante at 365-366, 650 A.2d at 777. Like Marsh, Shack is factually inapposite and therefore provides no basis for the Court’s opinion. The circumstances of the instant case stand in stark .contrast to those in Shack. Here effective alternative means of communication are readily available. Moreover, the people whom the Coalition *401sought to reach at the malls are far from the disadvantaged, impoverished people of Shack who were subject to the singular authority of the property owner; they are visitors to a mall drawn to that location for commercial purposes. No compelling interest or policy mandates an invasion of the property owner’s rights. Nothing in this case forces this Court to subserve the rights of private-property owners to the free-speech rights of the public as we were compelled to do in Shack.
IY
The majority states, “What is involved in this case is the right of every person and of every group to make their views known, however popular or unpopular they may be, and the right of the public to hear them and learn from them.” Ante at 371, 650 A.2d at 780. I find it axiomatic that the right to speak freely is inextricably linked with a right to a forum in which to express those thoughts and ideas. Without such a forum, the right of free expression would be nugatory. Traditionally, that forum has been on public property.
Our decision in Schmid extended that forum onto private property, but only in those limited situations in which the factors outlined in that opinion weighed in favor of extending that right to private property. The majority’s decision today guarantees the right to a forum for free expression not only on public property, or on private property in the limited circumstances as permitted under Schmid, but on all private property — not just shopping malls — where a captive audience can readily be found. Like the court in Cologne, I too am unable to “discern any legal basis distinguishing this commercial complex from other places where large numbers of people congregate, affording superior opportunities for political solicitation, such as sport stadiums, convention halls, theaters, county fairs, large office or apartment buildings, factories, supermarkets or department stores.” 469 A.2d at 1209; see also Southcenter, supra, 780 P.2d at 1292 (same); Woodland, *402supra, 378 N.W.2d at 353 (“ ‘Nor is size alone the controlling factor. The essentially private character of a store and its privately owned abutting property does not change by virtue of being large or clustered with other stores in a modern shopping center.’ ” (quoting Lloyd Corp., supra, 407 U.S. at 569, 92 S.Ct. at 2229, 33 L.Ed.2d at 143)).
The majority attempts to limit its holding to all regional malls and the one community mall involved in this action. Ante at 372, 650 A.2d at 780. That limitation is based on the Court’s understanding of a regional shopping center’s “essential nature”: “The mammoth size of these regional centers, the proliferation of uses, the all-embracing quality of the implied invitation * * Ibid. Yet the facts adduced at trial, the descriptions of each of these malls and the activities that did and did not take place in them, even the trade’s determination of what constitutes a regional mall, ante at 338-339, 650 A.2d at 763-764, reveal vast differences among these properties. Their only commonality is that they attract large numbers of people for commercial gain.
Moreover, despite its assertion that its holding is limited to large regional malls, the Court states that
[i]n New Jersey, we have an affirmative right of free speech, and neither government nor private entities can unreasonably restrict it. It is the extent of the restriction, and the circumstances of the restriction that are critical, not the identity of the party restricting free speech.
[Ante at 369, 650 A.2d at 779].
That broad assertion limits nothing; in fact, it extends this holding far beyond that ever contemplated in Schmid, perhaps beyond that ever contemplated by the drafters of New Jersey’s constitutional free speech provisions.
In reaching its result, the majority completely ignores the rights the New Jersey Constitution grants to the owners of private property. See art. I, paras. 1, 20. No support exists for the proposition that the majority announces today, that a right to free expression exists anywhere an audience may be found. The constitutional right to free expression does not command such an extreme result. It guarantees a forum, not an audience.
*403V
The majority’s opinion ignores the basic commercial purpose of these private malls, ascribes to them the downfall of urban business districts, and delegates to them the responsibility to fulfill the role once, and arguably still, played by town squares. It does all of that without any legitimate or rational justification. Moreover, the Court places burdens on the private malls that they are ill-suited to handle. Ultimately, mall owners will pass those burdens on to the consumer. The private property owner and ultimately the consumer, the forgotten person in the majority opinion, will have to pay the increased costs that result from the expanded security and other expenses associated with the public’s free access to the mall for expressional activities. Unlike the municipalities that the majority thinks the malls have supplanted, malls are not exempt from most tort claims under the New Jersey Tort Claims Act, N.J.S.A. 59:1-1 to :12-3.
Plaintiffs cannot claim that they have no means to express their opinion to the public other than by distributing pamphlets in shopping malls. No evidence shows that plaintiffs could not effectively distribute their pamphlets in other areas. Indeed, according to plaintiffs’ November 9, 1990, press release, they distributed their materials in at least thirty locations, including several downtown areas. Ante at 336, n. 3, 650 A.2d at 762, n. 3. They were able to distribute over 85,000 pamphlets in those locations during a three-day period. Plaintiffs do not need to use the malls, save for their own convenience. See ante at 369-370, 650 A.2d at 779 (discussing convenience and ease of using shopping malls for petition signing). “Petitioners’ convenience, however, does not create a constitutional right of access to private property for political activity.” Citizens For Ethical Gov’t, supra, 392 S.E.2d at 9.
The majority seems to assert that absent our creation of a right of free expression on this privately-owned property, the patrons therein would not receive important news and information about significant societal issues. Yet unlike the migrant workers in *404Shack, shoppers are free to come to and go from these malls as they choose. They can avail themselves of all the burdens and benefits of free society as they like.
Were we to adhere to Schmid and deny access to the malls, plaintiffs would nevertheless remain able to reach the public outside supermarkets and movie theaters, at train stations and bus stops, in parks and post offices, in the media, and even in the numerous still-vibrant downtown shopping districts. Plaintiffs can voice their opinions today more readily and more accessibly in more places and in more formats than ever before in human history.
Plaintiffs predicate their desires to express themselves on the private property of these shopping malls not on some constitutional mandate but rather on considerations of efficiency, cost, and convenience. Yet such factors do not a constitutional right create. Schmid, properly applied, has adequately served this state, both its protesting citizens and its private-property owners, for more than a decade. The majority’s departure from Schmid’s established standard is unprecedented. It makes neither good sense nor good law, and for those reasons, I respectfully dissent.
CLIFFORD and MICHELS, JJ., join in this opinion.
For reversal — Justices WILENTZ, HANDLER, O’HERN, and STEIN — 4.
For affirmance — Justices CLIFFORD, GARIBALDI and MICHELS — 3.